Draining Every Smile
by AcronymsAnonymous
Summary: Things happen, and as a result Rose winds up going to a new school. It's the classic tale of a fresh start and unresolved issues and it leads Rose to a lot more than she bargained for, maybe even more then she can handle. Will have sad parts towards or at the end
1. Preface

It's almost hard to believe, what with how things are going, that there's a future waiting for you on the other side of this; if you can get out of it alive. Maybe you're dramatizing, but it doesn't feel like it when you're stuck in the middle of a swamp of hormones, only some of which belonging to you, and the foreseeable end is years away. Maybe not year_s_, plural, but around one singular year. There's no way to really make it go faster for you, and there's no way to escape the world that puts you in a better place, so all you can do is hang on for the ride and be grateful that you're the type to breeze through essays and most assigned homework.

And then finally, what you think might have been the worst year of your life, ends. It's almost too sudden, like one day you're working hard and taking tests and trying to resist the urge to text in class, and the next you're free. You're out for the summer. Three full months of pure bliss. Seventh grade is finally at an end.

Sure, you realize that someday you'll look back at it and you'll realize how foolish all of your troubles were, how much fun you actually had. You'll remember all the fun times you had with old friends and you'll laugh about how silly you were and how ridiculous everything was, but for now you're just happy to get out. Summer. Freedom.

Of course, summer ends up being so busy and yet so boring. There's so much to do and so much you want to do, too much time at home surrounded by the imposing wizard figures of your childhood and not enough time to spend with friends, not enough time to spend alone doing nothing. Activities, camps, writing, entertaining yourself by chatting but never really doing anything with anyone. And then all of that comes to a standstill.

Two weeks with your mom and your extended family in a little state on the far side of America before you go back to the grueling schedule you maintain most days of a year, along with many of the other children around the world.

You stay in your aunt's house, which is at least twice the size of your own. To say the least it's impressive, and when you stay there and eat the home-cooked meals and your mother is less drunk than usual you feel like you could just stay there forever and maintain a pleasant state of happiness, though you know it's partially a vacation glow you're feeling. Your cousins make sure to stop by frequently, or you go visit them in their respective housings, and then finally it's time to go to the shore.

A two story house painted with barn colors right on the beach. It's full of woven blessings pinned in corners and illustrations of beaches, as well as so many old, faded photographs in delicate metal frames perched on dressers in the four rooms upstairs. The couches had a small and detailed print of a country scene in brown, or the other print of flowers and floral. Everything was mismatched, but somehow it all fit together in a pleasant, welcoming, _old_ way. You used to hate it here when you were little because there weren't any games to play, but you love it now. So few things left in the world are home made, not mass produced. Each feature is like a work of art.

And then there's the sailing, and the world seems to change perspective when you're on the boat. There's good distance between this house and the other houses on the waterline, but you can still see all the boats at dock a bit off from the shoreline, like a family of long-necked ducks feuding and giving a bit of distance, but still waiting for the others to make up so not going too far off. One of those boats is your uncle's, and he loves taking a few members of the family out for a good ride. You go out for a bit with him, your mother, and a younger cousin's family. It's delightful.

Joshua stays in the cabin of the boat most of the time, but the rest of you, you and the adults, stay out and enjoy the wind on your faces, through your hair, the gentle rock of the boat, the view. The water stretches out for a bit, but you can see the other houses there, the brick and white-washed wood little structures flat against the ground, with their little stone walls stacked a couple feet high, with the little gardens, everything lined by trees sprouting out but not growing too far above the roof and thickly populating. Everything was so close to the water, though, at closest maybe seven feet away.

One or two small rocky and verdant islands popped up close to civilization, but for the most part the water was uninterrupted. A sandy bank rimmed one side, like a palm cupping in the bouncing, deep, blue-green mirth, but beyond that there was ocean, vast and undisputed.

The clouds on that day you went sailing were beautiful, some of them were flattened and creamy wisps, but they sidled right up next to little puffs that reached the brightest whites at the tips and the deepest grey at the bottom, that loomed so close to the ground it looked like they might be grazing the trees. But even if some things looked so omniscient, they were also so heartbreakingly beautiful there was no way you wouldn't risk yourself for the chance to be so close.

The boat tipped at one point, the waves carried it as it was forced along by a strong breeze, and it was nearly vertical at one point. You could hear Joshua shouting his fearful dismay from the cabin, but you smiled. Family, laughing around you, telling old stories. Your mother, looking happier then you've ever seen her, more engaged, at her brightest. And you felt like you were on top of the world. For the most part, complete beauty around you, and the personalities around you flourish. Everything is at peace. The clouds, the seagulls at not so distant shores, the houses in their picturesque little beach scenes.

You tell yourself that you will never forget this moment, the moment on top of the world.


	2. A Band You've Never Heard Of

**CHAPTER ONE**

Sailing is the last thing you do before you leave, so when you walk into school you're still a little bit dazed. Your skin is more tan then it was ever meant to be and your hair still has that wind-blown look. Eighth grade changes everything, proclaimed one book of questionable reliability, and you're ready to see if that's true.

You're going to a different school this year, hours away in the smack-dab middle of the country. You'd be one of the measly few dozen out of two thousand in attendance to be boarding, rather then just going for the daytime attendance. It's a specialty school with focuses in writing, science, math, and history, with special departments for kids willing to do extracurricular studies in art, music, psychology, or any of several other listed options. So basically, a specialty school that specializes in everything.

You'll be taking psychology and joining the knitting club that the school has. You're also signed up for orchestra as a violinist. But none of that starts until the second day of school, because the first day of school is full of different initiations for all of the required classes and more group exercises then you'd ever encountered before. You almost let down your guard and integrated yourself into this group of people, but you didn't. No one did. This rendered all of these activities totally pointless, because even if some people got close no one was going to open up to a group of complete strangers.

You end up learning a lot about the school, the kids, the teachers, that no one told to you. Like that your english teacher doesn't really like kids that much, and expects none of you to act like kids but like adults. That she really really doesn't like kids. Or like the fact that your female P.E. teacher was probably going through a bad break up or divorce recently because she seemed really angry for no reason, and when she wasn't angry she looked sad. You learned that everybody at this school seems to be snobby and wealthy, most of are here without scholarship while you're on partial. And it isn't quite cheap to be here without any scholarship. The whole atmosphere is really pretentious, at least in the cafeteria. They did stop all the bonding activities long enough for everyone to eat and be quietly judged by their peers. You sat alone. Everyone around you gave off either vibes of a sort of trained over-politeness or of uncaring, unsaturated wealth and spoil. They all seemed either to be over-interested in shopping and horse-back riding or illegal things they could do and get away with because they were rich.

You aren't too concerned about the fact that you'll probably not get along with any of the kids here. For one thing, your math teacher is confusing and riddled, old but still game enough to deal with the shenanigans of so many students so much younger then he is, with patience that will stretch but does have a worthwhile breaking point. You know that you and he will get along famously. Another consolation is the fact that no one from your last school will be there. Not at school, not in your life. Even though you're fully aware that seventh grade may not be a big deal to you in the future, it's too soon to be sure or to be able to forget it. The little bursts of drama everywhere were just too much for you, so severe sometimes that they were not balanced out by the good times. That you thought about leaving the school during the middle of the year. But you survived till the end, and could make an easy transition to somewhere where you might not have to make friends and lose them, to where you could focus on your studies and your studies would actually be beneficial. You want to become a psychologist or an author, though you're a bit too shy to share your writing (not that you really have any close friends to share it with anymore) and your psychoanalysis can be viewed as a bit blunt by some of your less willing subjects. There wasn't any psychology course available as an extracurricular activity at your last school, and the writing program barely met state standards.

When you said goodbye to your friends at the school you were at last year, and to the school itself, you didn't really get all emotional like many other girls would. You just hugged them quickly and said goodbye, have a nice summer, by the way I'm going to this really cool school next year. You felt it was a clean break, though you were particularly vague to some of your friends as to where you were going. You didn't tell any of them _why_, and none of them asked. You suppose you weren't ever that close with most of them, only one or two, and by the end those relationships were pretty much shot.

You took a moment in the bathroom right after lunch, when you were coming out of the stalls. You caught view of your own reflection and you compared it to that of the girl washing her hands next to you. She was taller than you, but a bit heavier, and had a complexion a shade tanner than yours. Her hair was brown and wavy, and she had a nice face. She was wearing a lot of makeup. You looked at yourself and supposed you were wearing about half as much as she was. You were the less tall and thinner, short haired platinum blonde in the mirror next to her, with skin a couple shades tanner then pale and with dark lipstick and eyeliner on. With the daisy color of yellow headband and the burgundy colored short sleeved v-necked shirt stopping halfway through the thighs of your white jeans.

There wasn't a doubt in your mind that you wouldn't fit in with all the people like that, but as you'd thought about before, you were perfectly content not socializing at this new school.

You walk into your next initiation, your next welcoming into the school, the next informative introduction to a new element of your life, and begin to think about your mother. Her hair's curlier and a tiny bit longer than yours, but other than that the two of your are freakishly similar in appearance. But as many stories have once said, that's about where the similarities end. She's got this habit of being strangely passive aggressive to you about wizards, and she drinks a lot. She always has a martini in hand, or vodka or white wine or beer, though usually she's classier then beer. You don't quite get a 'strange feeling' when she's drunk herself into a stupor, but you find that when you start wondering if she has she's started to. You decide to take out your phone and text her, make sure she's okay. This is very, very unlike you, because you usually like to avoid her at all costs, but you have that memory sitting there of being at the shore, when she wasn't acting passive aggressive or drinking with a passion, and you'd hate for things to change back from that nice setting so quickly.

As soon as you finish and send the text ("Mother, do not forget to feed Jaspers and remember to give him water.") the person at the front of the room requests kindly the _utmost attention_ of their audience, a crowded room of eighth graders with other things they could be paying attention to, conversations they could be having. Very little of this attention is supplied, so the flustered whatever-person-this-is is forced to ask again, more forcefully, less kindly, louder. Apparently this is unlike them, so the returning students turned and their attention was caught for a brief moment. You have noticed that the students who don't have many friends pay attention more often and are ignored pretty much by the ones who do have friends, unlike someone who is cast aside by the main crowd who may be prodded or taunted occasionally, so you make the assumption that they're new as well. Everyone else is a returning student.

The person in charge begins to talk again. Something about rooms. So that's what this initiation is for. An informational welcoming speech about the rooming. You start paying even more attention.

Apparently there are certain rules which must be dutifully followed with no exceptions. Among them are the rules one would expect anywhere, no drugs or sex or drinking, as well as ones that are very specific, like if your music is loud enough to hear from the other side of the room with absolutely no strain on the ears it's too loud, like if there are any prescription medicines you have to take daily it's asked that you take them in the small bathroom in each room as opposed to in the main part of the room, and that peanuts in any shape size and form are forbidden from the dorms. The two rules that people seem the most opposed to, based on the tittering in the crowd, are that none of the boarders are allowed off campus without a note from a parent or teacher and that none of the kids not boarding are allowed in the dorm building. Visiting other dorms by the other boarders is permitted, however. That quiets down the kids some, though you wonder why. They already knew that, they were here last year and the year before, probably boarding. Maybe it's a newly instituted rule?

You had five boxes and your violin that you left, labeled with your first and last name, in the designated area for boxes of boarders. It had been a couple hours. Five boxes seemed to be a small number as compared to the piles of boxes the other boarders brought, which you suspected were each crammed full as possible with things that were totally useless. You'd brought wooden carved sewing needles your mother had gotten for you a couple years back and put them on top of your half-a-boxes worth of purple and black yarn, sandwiched between that and your laptop, fitted with a cozy that you proudly knitted yourself. Three of your boxes were filled with clothes, packed tightly. It was hard to cram enough clothes for a year in three boxes, even provided that you would have access to a washing machine and dryer weekly. The last box contained a blanket and some jewelry, as well as two or three wall hangings you might choose to employ upon seeing your room. You also might not, depending on your roommate. If they were distastefully cynical or anything like that and found your posters offensive or weird you might hang them proudly, but if they were kind and were offended they might guilt trip you into taking them down. Of course, you could probably analyze them psychologically as revenge, but in that case you might just make yourself feel worse.

You find you've been placed in the dorm room 6 on the second floor of the dorm building known as the 'English' building, presumably a last name of one of the founders. There are only two dorm buildings, and they're right next to each other, separated only by a small lawn with two benches and a planter box full of roses.

They've told you that you'll find your boxes in your room, but you can only hope they haven't been thrown out the window by some crazy roommate. But then again, what a preposterous idea. That would be an excellent opportunity for psychoanalysis, though.

You're a tiny bit nervous about meeting your roommate. Though you know they shouldn't be the kind of person you'd get along with, there's still the hope that you'd be friendly with each other. Maybe even become friends. It couldn't hurt to have a friend at school, especially if it was only one. And maybe they'd be like you, maybe you'd both share an interest in knitting and music. You cut off your little fantasy there, though, because that was too much to ask for already. You hadn't heard exactly how many other people joined the knitting club, but you knew it was around a dozen. A dozen out of thousands, such a small chance that they would be boarding, let alone in your dorm, let alone in your _room_. So you prepare yourself for the worst, make yourself expect something so impossibly bad that anything would be better. But you can't think of anything that isn't a possibility, so you decide to just get it over with and go into the building already and meet them.

Most of the boarders have already entered and started unpacking, so you're one of the last to enter, when you do people have already started getting settled. The layout of the dorm building is weird, you decide. The entrance is at one of the smaller sides of the rectangular buildings, and there's a hall leading down the middle of the first floor that ends with the stairs leading up to the second. You pass four doors total as you walk down the rough carpeted floor, and when you go upstairs you find there's only three occupied the top floor. The first door on the top floor is wide open, revealing a room devoid of people and completely stripped of all bedsheets and decorations. There are a few partially cleaned off scribbles on the wall. It is a perfect study spot.

Your room is conveniently right next to the empty door number eight, on the right of the stairs coming up. On the left side of the room, and of the building as far as you can tell, all the boys are situated. You don't bother learning the names of all of them yet, but you can hear obscenities being said loudly through the first occupied door you pass, and something that sounds like dub-step leaking through the closed door of the second. You turn and open your own door.

Immediately you are wading in plush. Little hugging 'squiddle' dolls and various stuffed animals are in a huge pile in the two yard space between your beds. Immediately your roommate shovels them into the yard and a half space at the foot of the bed behind the small desk pressed up into the corner. The arrangement is identical to the one that on the other side of the room, apparently your side of the room. Your boxes are piled on the small bed there, and the wall across the room is already adorned with posters of your roommate's choosing. Animal-people running through forests, 'squiddle' things, a band you haven't heard of. Photos already line the desk on that side of the room, worn and faded, in thin metal frames. You are reminded instantly of a dresser somewhere far off, but you don't quite place it as that for a few moments. All you get is the extreme sense of saddening déjà vu. Memory of a better time. But then it passes, and you have a minute to look at your roommate.

She's as tall as you and tanner than you. She's just as thin though she has a slightly more developed figure, though it's not by much. Her hair is long and black, fluffy and down to her waist. It looks almost like a back tail of a cartoon fox in that way. She's wearing round wire framed glasses that frame her large green eyes perfectly. Her teeth are crooked, but that's the last thing you notice about her.

"Rose, hello!" she says. You feel slightly startled. She is very cheery. She laughs. "Your name is written on your boxes. I hope you don't mind that I took this side of the room. I probably should have waited, but I just couldn't wait to start moving in, you know? This is your first year here, so I thought you might understand my excitement."

"Oh." you say. "Yeah, it is. Do you know if the knitting club here's any good?"

"Oh no, it's only my first year here too." she says. "I'm terribly sorry about the mess it seems I've already made with my stuffed animals, they get in the way so often..."

You're slightly confused, but you smile a smallest bit. There's a chance this could work. You excuse yourself to the door between the desks just so you can check it out. It's the bathroom they said would be there. There's a small, barred window at the top of the wall near to the ceiling, and it lets in a small amount of light. You return to the main part of the room to start setting yourself up. You put your violin on the desk and look for somewhere to put your clothes.

"Hey," you ask the roommate who's name you realize you still don't know, "where are we supposed to put our clothes?"

"Oh, there's a drawer at the bottom of the bed." she laughs. You reach down and pull it open, and immediately afterwards you've started stuffing it with your clothes. In only ten short minutes, you're as situated as anyone. Needles and yarn in the drawers of the desk, laptop next to the violin on top. Posters on the wall that you had brought, a darkly colored and altered 'squiddle' poster, the enlarged cover of a dark magic book, a band _she's_ never heard of. And you feel for a moment like this could almost be home, but it's still too soon to be sure.

"Sorry, I don't think I caught your name." you say.

"Oh!" she says, and giggles. "Jade Harley."

You decide that Jade is a strange girl. Strange, but nice. And a good roommate. You sit down and open your laptop and find a free, unlocked wifi available to you. You check your email. Spam, more spam. You're about to delete another email that _looks_ like spam, but you see that it's from the school, so you open it for good measure. Inside there's a little link, apparently to a chat client that's currently being tested. The school got a deal that lets the students use it, and report any bugs they might find when chatting one another. You decide to download it, because why not. It might come in useful someday. You've just started figuring out how it works when Jade starts to talk behind you.

"Hey, I'm going over to the room across from us. I think it would be a good idea for you to come too." Jade said. You look back at her, and a few seconds later you're knocking on the door of room number five. It opens, and you're greeted by what you imagine to be a glance from a blonde wearing dark glasses. You can't tell, because of how dark the lenses are tinted. He's wearing a red shirt with a record on it and jeans.

"Hey." He says after a second.

"Hi..." you say, slightly unsure. Jade takes a step forward and talks.

"Hi!" she says. "I'm Jade, this is Rose. We're the roommates from 6. I thought it would be nice to come over, introduce myself. Maybe help your roommate with his unpacking."

He took a step back and opened the door.

"Sure, come in. Dude's having problems unpacking." As Jade walked past he nodded. "Name's Dave."

The room was just barely big enough to hold the four of them and still be comfortable. It had the same arrangement as your room, but it was already more cluttered. A sword of horrible quality appeared to be sticky-tacked to the wall, if that was even possible. Posters were up on one side of the room that appeared to be of strange ironic webcomics, some type of puppet business, and a couple bands you're pretty sure _no one_'s heard of. A speaker system already is in place on the desk, which you can barely tell is a desk because the rest of it is completely covered with strange nude foam puppets.

The other side of the room is a pile of clothes and movie posters that the person standing on the bed is trying madly to assemble. It seems that one of the boxes was sliced open (by a shitty sword?) and all of its contents rained down on the room.

"Hi John." Jade says. John must be the kid on the bed, because he looks up in total surprise. He and Jade could almost be related, his hair is like hers but flatter and short in the way boys usually have their hair cut. He's wearing rectangular glasses with thicker frames and a 'Ghost Busters' shirt. A small stuffed bunny is peaking out of a red box he has perched on his desk.

"Like some help?" you offer. You bend down and immediately start folding and _neatly _piling clothes. Jade does the same, and between the two of you it only takes a couple minutes before all the clothes are tucked away in the drawer under the bed.

Meanwhile, John hangs his posters with the sticky tack Dave brought. There's one for a band _everyone_ has heard of, and several from Nick Cage movies, the largest from the movie _Con Air_. Then there are more movies, some of which universally depreciated which you sense John actually likes. He's got a small pile of DVD's tucked away at the bottom of the box where he had all the rolled up movie posters, and he tucks those away safely into a drawer on the desk.

Jade talks to Dave and you listen in a bit. You think you might smirk a little when you hear that Dave manages this totally ironic webcomic. You and Jade both promise to check it out.

But then you hear a bell and know that it's six thirty, dinner time. Since it's the first night, you're allowed to eat in your rooms. You do, with Jade, and you have the to opportunity to talk with her more.

"I live on an island in the Pacific." she says with a smile when you ask about her home. "I live there with my grandfather, and I have a really big dog who's kind of hard to control. I've been home schooled most of my life but I decided I wanted to do seventh grade year abroad, and it ended up seventh on. I went to a different school closer to home before this, but I was one of only a few english speakers in that area of South America and Grandfather wanted me to get a better education in a language I do speak so he flew me up here."

Your story seems dull compared to hers when you tell it. "I live in this country, though a couple hours away, with my mom. I've been going to school all my life but I decided I was ready for a change and wanted to start analyzing potential careers and there are a lot of options here that weren't available at my last school."

"Like psychology." she supplied. You nodded a little bit.

"I... don't remember mentioning my electives, that's... interesting." You said, backtracking.

"Really?" Jade asked. "That's funny." You learn through little things like this that Jade has strong sense of intuition that she doesn't really know how to control. You ask her about it, and she says that she's always had it. It made life for her a little difficult at times because when she went onto the mainlands with her grandfather and started acting over friendly, some of the locals got slightly suspicious of the things she said. A lot of them were very superstitious. Even in North America there's a lot of superstition, and if not that a lot of suspicion, surrounding her special intuition, so it's not really easy for her anywhere besides home on the island, but there aren't really that many people there. She doesn't regret leaving the island though, she knows that there is something waiting here for her that will be great. And at least in the U.S. there are careers she could choose that would use her intuition or at the very least that her intuition wouldn't affect.

Even with intuition aside, and at times 'intuition' may not even be a strong enough word to describe it, you find Jade to be a strange girl. She's got more stuffed animals then you thought was possible for someone to have and still love at this age, she seems like a bit of a hippie, and she listens to mostly reggae and really out-there jazz. But you guess weird is a pretty good trait for your room mate, considering how you are. You think you like this girl, though you're not quite sure how much yet. She's definitely someone you could live with, though. You think she likes you too, or at least can tolerate you, which is more than you can say for many people.

She can tolerate you and you can tolerate her, but you're not sure you can tolerate this food. You're contemplating asking your Mom for a microwave for christmas, because even microwavable macaroni and cheese would probably be better than this sandwich. The bread is soggy, there's a lot of meat and it's _way_ too salty, there's mustard on it and you don't even like mustard. It was a pre-prepared sandwich, and you feel like just by that it was always destined to fail. With a microwave you could do pretty much anything, you're like a microwave specialist. Your mom always managed to either burn the fancy food she made (it was always fancy with such expensive ingredients) or make it turn out perfectly, so you started to teach yourself at a young age how to use a microwave so you'd have something edible on the nights there was practically a cloud of smoke hovering above the stove. Your mom gave you a couple tips, and though you didn't trust them that well at first you tested them out and it turned out she was right about a lot of things. If you can get that microwave and maybe a small pot and somehow convince the school's lunch lady to supply you with produce and herbs then maybe you can prepare something semi decent for dinner a couple times a week.

Jade doesn't seem to mind the sandwich all that much, maybe even enjoys it. Of course she got a different one of the three options then you. Though it's horrifying, you're still convinced that you chose the best.

Jade decides to go to bed early, at about nine at night, because she's exhausted. She just got in a day ago from where she lives in the pacific and the jet-lag is major. You don't think it's possible for you to go to sleep so early, so you politely take your laptop into your lap, turn down the screen light and face the screen away from where she's lying. You check your email and your phone. There's a text from your mom, a reply to the one you'd sent earlier, promising to feed Jasper and asking how you were. You think to tell her of Jade and the airs of the other students and the kids across the hall that you met today and the food. You send your text ("School is well. Microwave is requested.") and find there's an email to all the members of the knitting club instructing the students to bring their own needles if they have them, if not they will be supplied. Yarn is available in all colors to members, bringing your own yarn is not necessary.

It takes a few moments for you to make the decision, with your finger hovering above the track pad for a couple seconds, but you do wind up clicking the bookmark for your favorite social networking site. You hadn't gone onto the site all summer, so when you open up the window there are notifications and events and people that you'd forgotten. You scroll with a blank expression through all of the updates from people you knew well, this person got a new dog, that person broke up with their boyfriend over the summer. Heartbreaking. Inspirational quotes misspelled from people you followed the updates of but didn't talk to often in real life, just eyed from a far. People you didn't like commenting on things in a way that almost made you root for them. Then you see all of the things about you.

It's horrible how much people can affect you from miles and months away, how much their words can strike home. Some of them posted goodbyes, some of them posted scornful and sarcastic remarks, criticism. Some of them posted pleas. Not as many insults as people who were your friends or who thought you were their friend posting sad inquiries and wishes for a better future for you, that acted like they had so much faith in your decision making. Like they had trust in you and cared for you when you knew they were pretty indifferent.

You keep scrolling. The first one to post was your best friend, or at least they were your best friend at the beginning of seventh grade. Now it's just angry, bitter, memories. A bit of nostalgia, scorn, and finality wrapped into one five sentence message out to you but posted for everyone to see. It packs a punch.

You blink your eyes more then you should have to. You keep your composure on a tight leash, even when no one's looking. But even after minutes, your eyes still have a tinge of bleary in them.

You know that you're gone to them now, like you were never there. They've all moved past. So it shouldn't matter if you delete your account, it would just finalize the separation. But you don't, you log out and exit the window but you don't delete the account. It troubles you, why would you keep a past like that hanging around? It's just an invitation for madness and all of the worst things to come riding back unbidden. But something keeps you from deleting it. Maybe your own nostalgia?

You feel that in psychology tomorrow there will be a lot of hypothetical questions asked. The great thing about knowing how the brain works would be knowing how your own brain works, and so it's only one more contributing factor to your interest in psychology. To learn why people do things, and to learn why you do things. To learn why they say things, and to learn why you say things.

You go into the bathroom to change into your pajamas so you can be comfortable in sleep. An hour passed while you were fooling around online, oh how time flies. You can see the moon from through the bars of the window, and it casts an eerie light into the bathroom. Your skin looks paler in the light of the moon then it does in the light of the sun. You look like you should at night, or at least this is how you feel you should look at least. It reflects how you feel, if pale or unnaturally snowy white can be a feeling. The square of tiles where the moon-beams hit shine blue. You take a step onto them. The ground is cold everywhere, no matter how it looks. You slip into your dark purple nightgown. It has a small crescent moon plastered on the chest. Corny, but you like it. There is no shame in liking corny things once in a while.

Lying in bed, tossing and turning, you try to adjust to the silence. You're used to hearing the river near to your house always flowing, the sound of water moving an ever-present noise when you drifted off at night. There isn't any sound like that here, not at first. But then you notice a faint beat from downstairs drifting up, music muffled by the carpet on the floor. Deemed too loud by rules, but maybe just loud enough to distract, to sleep too. And you notice the wind, which hadn't been there before during the day but crept out at night, rustling the drying leaves on the small trees outside. And you notice the light tapping of feet against the cold, hard tile in another room, someone pacing the bathroom floor loudly. Maybe none of it was that loud, but if you searched you could find it. Comforting, there. You start to relax without even knowing it, the heat too hot for what you're used to but something you begin to ignore, the noises too different but still noises, everything not what you're used to but something you already feel like you _could_ be used to.

Every night before you sleep, you think of everything you've done wrong. It's not like some kind of twisted relaxation technique, it just happens. That time you analyzed that girl in third grade and she was insulted and got upset, even though you never meant it like that. In fifth grade when you told on a boy for taking your food and he was crying and so so sorry. That time in seventh grade when you flipped someone off and the look on their face said everything you wished you'd never have to hear. Everything. And it kills you. It's not calming, it's not pleasant, it's horrible and it makes you feel like the worst person that ever lived. It takes hours for you to fall asleep sometimes because you're so stuck on all the bad things you did. You're not religious, so it isn't about going to heaven or hell. It's just about being a good person, being the person you want to be. But sometimes you just feel like a monster.

There aren't really any new memories to add to the list, new things you did wrong. Just a bunch from the past that haunt you still. You start to regret not talking to your mom more but other then that there's absolutely nothing new.

You drift off relatively easily, considering the circumstances, and you feel like for once maybe you don't have quite too much to think about.

You do something different for a change after you've thought about all of that for about a half an hour. You think about tomorrow. You think about your classes and you think about your teachers.

At the school you went to last year, all the teachers were horrible. Many of them disliked kids and refused to debate or to consider alternatives to what they were teaching, alternative theories and concepts. It was if there was a decree against 'what if's from the day they were hired. As if all of them were overly religious catholic or protestant from the fifteenth century and every new idea suggested by a student was someone asking them about the pros of satanism. The literature department at that school was much weaker than the one here, and you look forward to finally being able to write and have constructive criticism coming from the teacher as opposed to useless criticism from peers. Knitting wasn't something the people at that last school _did_, here there's a club for it.

Tomorrow you have orchestra and knitting club and psychology and all of your regular classes. You'll be giving up your lunch time and getting to school forty five minutes early. Your computer's alarm is set. You hope it doesn't wake Jade up. You stay after school until four for psychology. It's going to be a long school day, but it'll all be worth it when you know things...


	3. Microwave Cakes

**CHAPTER TWO**

The alarm does wake Jade up, but thank god she has an early morning class she has to get up for too. She didn't set an alarm for herself because she knew that you'd set one, which is really strange to think about, but you don't ponder it for long. You rush off to orchestra with your violin, and Jade to whatever class she's taking. She's wearing a rainbow tie die shirt and a khaki skirt. You're wearing black jeans and a dark purple shirt with the same kind of makeup and hair as yesterday's.

You see the others in orchestra are a little bit weird and only slightly talented though obvious hard workers. You'd taken private lessons for six years and are playing eleventh grade level music. It's good because the violinists in orchestra could really use a good lead.

The English/writing program is as good as you'd always hoped, and you know you won't feel restricted here. The sky seems to be the limit, and you know you'll enjoy writing several emotional and retarded haikus about it.

_"Bounty of options,_

_I am graced by a clear sky._

_Unrestricted me."_

Math is math is math, but you're right, because you and the teacher do get along famously. Science is boring, but you know that it could be unnervingly useful in the future, maybe as a psychologist, so you pay attention anyway. Biology at the very least might help, and thank goodness that's what you're studying this year. You'd hate for all of this information to go to waste. History is a subject that will surely go to waste on you, the information you gather there is the kind that is immediately destroyed at the beginning of the summer. You don't see any reason to remember anything they tell you, but you do anyway. Not out of your own will, but because it's something you just naturally do. Knitting club is amusing, you have plans to knit a large squid in a week. It would be a record for you.

Then there's psychology. Of course it's dumbed down a bit so you and your classmates can understand it, but it's still a lot to grasp. You can't seem to take enough notes. This first day you learn about the anatomy of the human brain and several details on that subject. You could not be more excited for the rest of the classes to follow.

When you get back to your room you've got homework to do. A couple notes on some American war, a page of problems for math, what was guaranteed to be the only worksheet in English all year. Psychology as an elective doesn't have any homework, or not usually.

The whole rest of the week flies by in this manner, with some practicing of violin and knitting involved. You check out the blog that Dave ironically manages. He and Jade really seem to be hitting it off, you're prepared to place bets on their immanent coupling.

Finally it's the weekend. No classes, just time to hang around and do nothing. You're not really sure what type of nothing you should be doing, though.

"Dave, John and I are all going for a walk around campus. Do you want to come with us? We're just going to hang out for a bit and then eat and stuff." Jade suggests. You agree, and you bring your needles and some yarn in a little purse just in case you get bored or rejected. You find the latter more likely.

You guys find a nice spot where it will just be you guys, under a tree off to the side of the main school building, on the large front lawn. You wind up knitting anyway while you talk with them in the shade, just to have something to do with your hands.

"Rose, you're never there after school ends." John says. "What do you do after school?"

"I take the offered psychology course as an extra class at the end of the day." you say.

"What do you during lunch?" he asks.

"I'm in knitting club. I go every day." you say.

"Morning?"

"Orchestra."

"You have a totally packed schedule." John says.

"John's a total fucking deadbeat with no hobbies." Dave says.

"That's not true, I watch movies and I collect movie posters and stuff." John says. "_You're_ a total fucking deadbeat, Strider." Strider is Dave's last name, apparently.

"Okay, watching bad movies un-ironically is not only the lamest thing to do ever but is also not a hobby." Dave says. "And I do things, I manage a blog. It's the shit, man, in case you haven't heard about it. The fucking shit."

"Totally." John says, accompanied by an eye roll. "Just like those glasses are the shit and that band you listen to is the shit."

"That's right, bro." Dave says. "_I_ am the _fucking shit_." You're almost having a hard time following the conversation while maintaining a high quality of scarf at a rapid-fire knitting speed, but you manage. The yarn you're using is multicolored, you got it from the manager of the knitting club. They gave it to you because of 'how awesome your skills are', or at least that's how they phrased it. You're thinking this scarf will be for Jade.

You can see on Jade's face an expression of mild disapproval, most likely she disapproves of all the arguing, but you can see also that she's starting to get used to it. It probably will never stop, considering those boys and how they are with each other.

Somehow, Dave ends up sharing an ironic rap with you, and you end up in deep conversation about the role of rap as part of the collection of popular music genres and how it got there. Well, it may be deep on your end, but less so on his end. John and Jade have nothing to offer to the conversation so they just watch in mild bemusement. You don't listen to rap, really. You think there's a band Dave would like that you listen to occasionally, though it might be too mainstream for his obvious hipster tastes. It disbanded recently and is known for the electro-jungle feel of their music as well as the ironic lyrics. He would take well to the irony.

You find yourself ten minutes later in a completely different conversation, on the song 'Ironic' and how Dave actually listens to it ironically. Then you take a big step forward and question his irony in a psychological way.

"Really, Dave." you say. "What more is ironic about many of the things you label with irony then the fact that they're not actually ironic? How deeply do you understand the concept of irony?"

"You don't understand because this is some deeply ironic shit I'm bringing out." he replies. "It's ironic on so many levels, it's like a fucking hailstorm of advanced irony. It's so fucking advanced that ironic professors of irony wouldn't even get it. They'd be all like, 'What is this advanced ironic shit? I don't fucking get it because it's fucking Strider level irony.'"

"Because you're 'the shit', right?" you ask.

"Exactly. Fucking right." Dave says. You're not really sure how feces somehow became a symbol of respect, power, and worship, but you're not ready to get into another debate with Dave about one of the concepts he holds dear to himself. You're sure he'll be a field day to analyze when you know more about psychology. Him and Jade, with her intuition. You're not really sure if psychology can help you with how the intuition works, though. It seems like it could be something more than that.

You all wind up eating another pre-made sandwich. It's as disgusting as it was the first day.

"I'm going to do my best to acquire a microwave as to prevent any further loss of brain cells by way of hideous pre-made sandwiches. I have to say, they are at the pit of the pre-made food ladder. The worst. Nothing worse than pre-made sandwiches." you say.

"Bagel-dogs." John says. You raise an eyebrow. "They're these disgusting hot dogs wrapped in something like whole-wheat raw dough. Usually the dough is loose around the dog, the dog is too salty, and basically everything sucks."

"I'm not sure that's worse than what I'm eating." you reply.

"I'm not sure what you're eating, but you should be eating what I'm eating." Dave says. You pretty much decide to mentally tack on 'ironically' if you ever write about this. 'Dave said ironically' would portray how fully immersed in misguided irony he is. "It is the mother-fucking pinnacle of pre-made food. It is the shit. It is the most delicious cuisine that has ever touched my wet tongue. Like a fucking symphony on my usually underwhelmed tastebuds."

"Mine's okay." Jade says with a shrug. She has the ability to pretty much ignore everything they say. Pretty much but not totally, because you notice how she blushes a tiny bit every time Dave turns towards her while speaking or every time he uses her name.

"I have to say, I like the microwave idea." John says. You smile a little bit, because you knew it was a good idea, but still.

"I can do well with a microwave." you say, somewhat unnecessarily. "I've made leek stew with a microwave before."

John looks at Dave and Jade. "If she gets a microwave, we're all going over there for every dinner ever."

"I can make a small cake in the microwave." you say.

"Fuck no. Don't even..." John says.

"His dad's a bit cake obsessed. Like, totally cake obsessed." Jade says. "More like everything to do with Betty Crocker really."

"Ah, do not speak of the batter-witch!" John shouts, covering his ears. You laugh and so does Jade.

"I think the microwave is a good idea." Jade says. "Where would you put it though?"

"On the desk." you say. "I can put it on the desk sometimes and move it to the floor when I'm studying."

"You realize that having a microwave is totally opening your room up to everyone for dinners at your place, every night. Probably." John says.

"I guess." you say. "Not that we actually have to let you in. The door has a lock you know. Jade, would you be okay if people started coming over to eat every once in a while?"

"Sure." she agrees with a smile. "But not when I have too much homework, okay?"

"Deal." you say. "Assuming I can get my hands on this microwave. Here, let me text my mom about it..." You grab your phone from your little purse and text your mom ("Mother, would it be possible to have cooking appliances, preferably a microwave, shipped to me at school. My room is 6 of the English building.") and put it back in the purse. You continue with your knitting. The scarf is almost done. It's thick and warm and not especially useful for the warm summer months but definitely for the winter. You've heard winters here can be cold.

You talk more before deciding to head back to the guys's rooms to hang out in. You're disappointed that you couldn't go somewhere else, that the privilege of wandering around the nearby town is reserve for the teens of the high-school run by the same people a few blocks over. You get to the top of the stairs and Dave realizes he's dropped something. What follows is probably more spectacular then anything you've seen before.

Dave was halfway up the second portion of the stairs when he realized that his cell phone was missing, that it was probably just towards the bottom of the stairs. The moment his foot touches the top floor he turns and takes a great step down, something he was trying to make look cool or ninja or ironic or however he would describe that, and the top of his toe touches the second stair down. His foot folds over forward a bit and he's falling, soon he's rolling, and then he hits the wall before the stairs continue down and manages to somehow go down them too.

As it turns out, his phone is at the bottom. But you can't not use this chance to reference something Strider would undoubtedly know.

"I warned you about the stairs, bro." you laugh. He looks at you, or at least you think you can feel his eyes on you. "I warned you dog." He seems to be distracted by this because his foot slips and he's down the stairs again. Jade cries out and runs down to help him. As he ironically crawls up the stairs with her assistance, you say, "It keeps happening."

"Reference secured." Dave confirms. "Fucking awesome."

You think that, despite your previous frivolous quarrels with Dave, more like friendly debates, you have earned his respect and possibly friendship. You hope. He doesn't seem like the type to stand for any crap, in the drama sense or in the bullying sense. Not that you're too worried about all of that happening this year.

You spend a lot of time the next day staring at the social networking site. Not your old account, but the login page as you think about going on. What it might mean that you wanted to see how things were going in the lives of your past friends. That you cared. You wonder briefly if anyone at this school has an account on that website, any of your new friends. But then you remember you only have one or two new friends, three at most. Jade isn't likely to have an account, Dave might ironically but never use it, you don't know about John. John seems different from both of them.

You realize later during the week that John's a bit different because he's more normal than the rest of you. Jade's from that far off island in the Pacific and Dave's got the puppets and the strange almost conceptual irony. John's just a kid that likes to watch and obsess over bad movies and that plays piano and all the rest of his normal kid stuff.

About a month into school you can definitely say that you've become friends with Jade and maybe Dave. There's a lot more that you learn about everyone in that time, like that Jade's grandfather was a great adventurer that explored all over and did all the typical adventurer stuff and that Jade plays the bass and a little flute. That Dave's older brother was borderline abusive to him as a child and that he was really into the turn tables. That John's Dad had lots of harlequins lying around the house and that, besides that, he was so ordinary it nearly gave John a headache. Just a regular business man, as he said, and the way he said it made it seem like it had been some sort of a revelation. You can see yourself becoming good friends with John in the future, but it takes time to make friends, for you at least.

On the weekend you're hanging out with all of them again. You haven't really socialized much out of this little group of people, though you suspect the others have extended their social range farther than you have. The four of you are sitting on the lawn talking about school and kids in class and all of the regular stuff when you see a UPS truck round the corner and leave a package at the school's gate. They press a button which must resemble a buzzer or a doorbell of some kind and an office personnel comes out to collect the package. The package is large, the package is the typical brown cardboard, and the person coming in from the office is having a bit of a hard time carrying it. You know that person from your daily trip to the office as the self appointed refresher of tissue boxes, which need to be replaced regularly.

"Where are you going?" John asks as you get up.

"Helping them." you say, walking over. He must have not pegged you as the type to help out if the expression on his face is any indication, and that almost makes your heart twinge. You thought you'd seem like a good person. But in the long run, it doesn't really matter.

"Can I help you?" you ask the person from the school office. Their face lights up a little, relieved, as they offer you a corner to carry.

They're short, a little taller than you though, and their arms are stubby. You could carry this pretty easily. You take the package in it's entirety and they smile.

"Rose, do you think you could be a dear and take that somewhere for me?" they ask.

"Yes. Where is this headed for?" you ask.

"Oh, one of the student rooms. A delivery from outside I guess, maybe a gift from a parent? Let's see, hmm, looks like Six of the English building." they say. You try not to look surprised, because that would be unprofessional. Not that this is a profession for you, but it's still good to take all of your tasks seriously.

"No problem." you say, smiling. You turn and head off immediately. A package, for you? Surprised and excited. Excitement is surely the underlying emotion there, you're almost looking forward to opening this. You've got an idea of what it is, and it could only be from your mother.

It turns out you were one hundred percent correct with your guess. As soon as you got to your room, you closed the door and tore open the package, piled foam peanuts neatly on one corner of the bed. Inside the box was a miniature sized kitchen set, complete with a mini-fridge, coffee and tea machine, and pots and pans set. Not to mention, on top of all that, the shiny black microwave.

Jade is ecstatic when she finds out, though you can barely imagine why. You have a hard time believing that your mother's back to these passive aggressive games, outdoing you and overdoing everything. You thought you'd gotten over all of that, you and her, but apparently she's back at it and your only choice really is to fight back.

You're not entirely sure Jade realizes it, so you have to point it out to her.

"Jade, even though we've got the equipment we can't make anything without actual supplies and produce." you say. Her response is as vague and confusing if slightly optimistic as usual.

"Soon. You'll have everything soon, you need to take action though." she replies.

You decide eventually that the right course of action is to pursue the lunch lady and pay her to pick up some extra supplies for your own home cooking. You're not sure how to do so, saying that the prepared sandwiches were horrible that she made and you demanded to make your own dinners might not go over well. You're not sure, but you think the lunch lady is a very serious, straight forward woman.

You decide to knit her something, a scarf perhaps. Scarves really are your specialty, though you do enjoy knitting creatures often as well. You still haven't given that scarf to Jade, but you think that you'll do that soon. You hear her birthday's coming soon.

You make sure to carefully observe the lunch lady during lunch time. You have a spot with Jade and John and Dave now. It wasn't like that at first. Dave had his own cool, ironic friends, but he doesn't care so much about his image when it comes to Jade. Jade's your friend, and a couple days after that she said she couldn't bear to see you sitting all alone like that and invited you to sit with them. It would be impolite to turn her down, so you wound up sitting with her. John was just too stupid, or perhaps too smart, to take the hints Dave was throwing, and so just wound up there anyway.

It's a couple of days of cold, hard analysis before you actually talk to the Lunch Lady. You see how hard she works and you know she deserves the capitalized title.

She's sitting outside, having a smoke. It's just after you get out from the school portion of your day and just an hour and a half before she puts out dinner. You approach her with caution; it looks like she's done with kids for the day, though she's not so fortunate to actually be done with kids for the day.

"Miss Brown," you say, because that's the name listed on her name tag, "I don't believe I've actually had the chance to thank you for your services yet." She looks you up and down for a moment. Her hair is grey and pulled back, her gaze is firm and judging.

"Oh yeah, you're that girl. What do you want?" she snaps. You decide you like this woman.

"I've brought a gift for you." you say. You say 'gift' but what you think is 'peace token' and 'offering'. She narrows her eyes as you take out the scarf. It's blue, a color she seems not to trust. Or maybe she doesn't trust you. You believe it's probable.

She looks over the scarf once she has it in her hand. You chose the softest material for this one and probably spent the most time on it out of all the scarves you've made this school year so far. She looks up again, and this time her gaze is a challenge, not a distrust but a bargain.

"What do you want?" she asks again.

"I appreciate your cooking, but I aspire to cook myself." you say. "I was hoping you could give me lessons and perhaps provide me with materials for my home cooking, pick up a couple extra things when you're shopping for yourself maybe? I'm prepared to pay you."

"Don't have any time for lessons." she says. She takes a drag, looks at the ground. She exhales smoke as she continues. "No time for lessons, I could pick something up for you. How would you cook though? You can't use my kitchen, is for sure."

"I have a kitchen set at home." you say. "Well, in my room. I have a list, if that's alright. A friend's birthday is coming up and I'd like to make something special for them."

She looks at you. "You really do like cooking, don't you?" Another drag, then she exhales. "Let me tell you something. I'm not much of a cooking enthusiast. Never went to any cooking school, never did any of that. Got hired here because I can cook something simple and they'll make you eat something." She looks at you and her gaze is colder and harder than ever. "I know you're playing me. You might want to cook but you're not a cooking enthusiast either. You don't like my food, no one should in their right mind. It's the hot lunch food. I can tell you're bribing me with this scarf, trying to soften me up."

There's a second where her words are hanging in the air. She knows. You don't back down, though, because you don't think this would ever get done if you did. It's a long second, though, as she stares at you. Another drag. Another exhale. The smoke curls up into the air. This woman is not a happy woman, you know that. She took the job because she was in some bad place, desperately needed a job. She doesn't even like cooking that much. She doesn't like kids. She doesn't like her life. You bet she knows how much each drag on the cigarette is killing her lungs and doesn't care. But you think she'd care if she heard the doctors telling her she had cancer, you think she'd have a newfound appreciation for life if she only had a few months left to live. She's one of the pathetic creatures so desperate to die that turn desperate to live at the chance they might actually lose their life. You'd help her. You don't think you really could, but if you could you would. She's the type of person that you like.

"But it's a good thing I like you." she says. You're almost surprised when she starts talking again. "You're strong, won't back down from a challenge. Show me the list and give me the money."

"Thank you." you say, and you give her both. You know how you sound; cold, curt. It's exactly how you want to come off sounding.

"I've got things to do." she says. She drops the cigarette on the ground, crunches it under her heel. She throws you a slight nod before she goes back inside.

You know you've just made an under table deal with the lunch lady, and you're not surprised. It doesn't seem that strange to you. You're just satisfied that you had such a pleasant transaction, and a little bit sad by the sight of her. You make a note to drop by again and say hi sometime.

You make sure to thank her every time she serves you food, and she gives you a knowing glance.

In a week you have everything you'd asked for. You arranged a special meeting with Dave the friday after.

"Dave, tomorrow's Jade's birthday, something I expect you to be fully aware of, and if you're not then I must admit it's likely not by any fault of your own." you say. You turn to him. "You got her something, right? Made her something, at least?"

"Yup." he says.

"Take her out on a date. We need her to be distracted and away from the room." you say. "Not only am I making her a cake but I'm throwing a surprise birthday party." Dave agrees to this plan. You must admit it is a fairly marvelous plan, you're proud of it.

On the day of the party, John walks in. You've got the ingredients out and are mixing them in a pan with all of your mother's helpful tools and utensils. Cups of different liquids are dumped in. You grab the _Betty Crocker Super-Moist _cake mix and rip off the top, tear into the plastic, pour out the powder into the liquid goo. You turn and look at John. He is frozen, paralyzed, his face bearing an expression of something that surpasses distaste entirely, bordering on horror or perhaps full blown disgust. He's turned on his heels before he even says anything, which you ignore as you continue baking.

Seven minutes in the microwave, as the online recipe dictated, and the cake is done. It's small, you have to admit, but it resembles to you new beginnings of the finest microwave cuisine. You frost it and put candles on, then spend a few minutes wrapping the scarf you made for Jade.

She gets back from her date with Dave, and at that time John is present in the room. He snuck back around, and though he insisted on placing the microwave in front of both the cake and the box which he found offensive for some reason, he could stand to be in the room with them. Maybe you were wrong, John isn't quite a normal child. Maybe more normal than any of you, but not _normal_ by any standards. He waits patiently until Jade arrives, at which point you both stand up and watch her expression change from satisfied and peaceful to gleeful. Her arm was on Dave's, but she detaches herself from him immediately to give you and John a big hug each before returning. You don't wait too long to light the candles, and when you do the three of you erupt into a chorus 'Happy Birthday' around Jade. She looks so happy, and you feel good knowing you were part of that. You sit her down and slice off a piece of your home-made microwave cake for her while Dave and John round up the presents. She seems slightly overwhelmed, but surprised and excited. She takes time enjoying the cake, then she opens presents.

You won't pretend you know what Dave's gift is, but you don't ask either. Whatever it is, Jade loves it. John gives her something more cheesy then even imaginable, how does he come up with this stuff? You give her the scarf, which she likes a lot. You feel like you could almost be preening right now. You made something that she liked, and though you were pretty confident in it, you never let go of that underlying doubt in your work, that feeling that it wasn't good enough, that you weren't good enough. You wouldn't call it preening, exactly, but you're very proud of what you've done.

You make dinner too, after the cake. The four of you sit on the beds with your bowls of spaghetti and you definitely preen when John compliments your cooking. But then he makes a crack at it, about how you're acting, and so does Dave, and you'd be tempted to start a food fight if you weren't more mature then that. So much more.

The next day you have to explain the grease stains on the bed sheets. You don't have any excuse really, but again, you'd like to say that the grease stains do not resemble olive oil in any way and the shapes of the stains do not look long and skinny and possibly resemble the stains made by long and thin strips of some kind of fiber compound. You'd like to remind everyone again that you are way, way too mature to start a food fight.

Usually.

Of course, word gets around, not about the food fight you didn't start but about the microwave and the cooking, and suddenly there are people you don't know by name looking at you twice in the hall and acting nicer and Jade suddenly has a lot more friends over. You tell her to keep a watch on your things, make sure they don't get damaged by less careful hands, and escape to room number eight to study.

It's just once that you do that, and then just twice. Then it becomes kind of regular, almost daily. You notice little things that aren't important and that room becomes almost like your second home. One day Jade talks to you about the room.

"Don't get too used to it." Jade says.

"To what?" you ask.

"The room." she says. "Room number eight. Having it as a personal study."

"Why not?" you ask. You ask even though you know the answer will most likely be confusing and vague and puzzle like and not helpful in the least.

"The girls that live there." she says, and you're proven right yet again about Jade's strange intuition. It seems almost useless at times, counterproductive.

"What girls?" you ask. "Jade, it's an _empty room_. It's been empty all this year so far. That's months."

"There are girls." she says. You'd be weirded out if you weren't used to this by now. "You just haven't met them yet."

"What, like ghosts?" you ask, and while to some extent you certainly hope not you see how that could make for some interesting parties and sleepovers.

"No." Jade says. "Living girls. Not yet. Don't get so used to it."

You leave it at that and sigh slightly as you grab your bag and head over to room eight.

The walls are white and there's a small chip in the paint every here and there. Under the paint it's yellowed, faded. The wall is ugly underneath it's shell. There's writing on the walls, just a tiny bit, and it's all smudged out. Green marker, purplish. There's white-out over some of it, but the color still shows through. Not the words, just the color. You sit on the bed while you work, not the floor and not at one of the desks. The mattress is stained various colors from various things and you've always chosen not to contemplate that, though it may be tempting.

You leave the door to the bathroom open while you work, and keep the door to the hall closed. The whole point of using this room is to shut out the rest of the world and quietly get some work done. The window in the bathroom is positioned perfectly in this room, so that when you wind up staying past dark working you can see the light of the moon, even from the bed. The small window and bars cause a pattern of shadow on the floor, four horizontal stripes. They're tinted what looks like blue because of how the light is here. It's not what you're used to from home, and it's something you definitely could never get used to, nor would you want to. It's beautiful, and you want that to stay fresh.

All around, it's also the perfect spot for writing.

You've become less shy about your writing. Jade's read some of your stuff, you share out more in class. It's not that drastic of an improvement, but it's something. You really do like writing, and you still feel that half of what you write is crap, but you're not upset by that. You write because you enjoy it and you like getting good at it, not because you _are_ good at it.

December comes quickly, and for you all that really means is your birthday is around the corner. You've never been big on Christmas. What is Christmas to a kid who never believed in Santa and whose mom was never sober enough to make Christmas anything less then a partial disaster. You get the text that she's been called to an urgent matter of business and probably won't be home for the holiday. You have two options, to go to your dreadful Aunt Mildred's house for Christmas or to stay with your cousins. You love your cousins to death and you love the east coast with all of your heart, but you don't want to impose on them. Mildred is a horrible hag who's always been cruel to everybody and owns eight dogs. There are old cat ladies that are sweet and give you brownies and then there are old dog ladies, and you know what they say about cats and dogs being so entirely opposite each-other and in this case you extend that to define cat people and dog people as well. You've never even seen Mildred look at a brownie, much less make one.

You talk to Jade about these choices. She's staying because with the jet lag and the length of the trip and the cost going back home during the two week vacation just wouldn't be worth it. She tells you that the school stays open during the break, the boarding part at least, and you can stay here. You're sure your mom wasn't aware of that option, and that's the option that you choose.

As it turns out, Dave and John are staying, and pretty much the whole English building. Most of the boarders are boarding not just because the commute is unreasonable but because their parents are always out. Dave tells you that most of them have been going for several years, they're used to staying through the holidays. You find that a bit sad, even if Christmas isn't big to you.

Also, though Christmas isn't big to you, you insist on getting a tree. You bribe the Lunch Lady again to get a tree, but she discounts you, probably out of pity for your whole dorm. She also gets you more pop-tarts and pasta and food then you know your money could have bought, but you don't say anything. Just like she doesn't say anything when you tip her and give her another scarf.

The tree is like the tree from Charlie Brown. It's frail and small and you put it out in the hall, where you decorate it with popcorn strung on yarn and various knitted little ornaments, because you don't have anything else to give to it. But also like with the Charlie Brown tree, everyone adds. Jade has a couple stuffed animals small enough so she strings them up and hangs them. Dave's got some old CD's, probably of bands he used to like until they got famous, and he puts those on the tree. John adds little things made of paper scraps that look like they were supposed to be those paper snowflakes. The sentiment is appreciated. Then suddenly someone with actual ornaments starts hanging some, and someone with a skill at making paper cranes and someone who punched holes in bottle caps. Even the people you don't know contribute. It's funny to you how people you don't know are putting so much effort into decorating the tree you brought. And you guess, even though you brought it, it isn't really your tree. It's the tree for the whole building, for all the kids who don't have anywhere to go home to for Christmas.

It's cold here in December, colder than you thought it would be. Christmas Eve is probably the day with the most frigid temperatures you've ever been subjected to. Jade persuaded you to make scarves for John and Dave too, so when you're walking around campus with them you're all wearing them. Yours is purple, Jade's is the one you made for her birthday, John's is blue, and Dave's is red. You can tell they're grateful, even if they don't fully express that vocally, by the way they wrap the scarves around their face over and over and over again to all of it's length and then hang them to dry in the bathroom when they get back.

While you walked around, though, you took in the cold. It was very cold but it was nice to some extent. You're one much more for the winter than the summer and you find it to be pleasant. It's beautiful, too, like so many things. The grass is frosted over and the little glimmering crystals of water are white and beautiful, they cover the dirt too. Everything is frozen. The trees shed their leaves, the one you sit under with them did as well. Autumn was a pretty time but winter is the beautiful time, with the trees bare with naked limbs reaching to the sky. Like dark, shriveling hands springing from the ground to grasp the clouds but not quite reaching. There is beauty in the darker aspects of life, and sometimes you wonder why others can't see that.

There's no staying up late and shivering with excitement this year, not that there ever really was any for you. But you do linger up for a while longer than Jade, walking up and down the halls. You know it's kind of ridiculous, but some nights you need to stretch your legs before you can sleep, simply because you're used to walking across your huge house to get to bed.

Christmas morning is slow and happy. You wake up and make pop tarts and hot chocolate for breakfast, not just for you and Jade but for the boys too. You guess they've just become part of the collective _you_, your group and your friends and you guys. You eat with them out in the hall and exchange gifts by the tree.

You give Dave an ironic sweater, John a non-ironic movie reference sweater, and Jade a plush squid that you knit and stuffed with yarn. You get a 'squiddle' from Jade, but the eyes are altered to look like that on your altered poster. John gives you a special psychology book, which you appreciated. Dave gives you some music he wrote, suited more to your tastes than his.

Almost everything this year is home-made or great lengths were gone to to acquire the gift. It feels really special, and really personal. You think about Jade taking the time to carefully adjust and color the eyes of the squiddle and doing as great of a job as she did, of John looking for that book online and buying it with his limited supply of money, or maybe sneaking out to buy it from a bookstore, of Dave thinking of you and writing a song he thought you might like, painful as that could be.

There's this feeling that you have, something you're not used to. There's not really any way to describe it, but it's wonderful. You think of the cold, hard ground outside and the grass that's nearly frozen solid, the air that fogs up with every exhale. The dark trees that reach for the sky but never touch the clouds. And you look at your tree, not exclusively yours because you brought it but yours in the sense of the collective _you_, with Dave and Jade and John and all of the people that added the bits and pieces, that helped make the tree what it is, a tree that's warm and friendly and belongs to everyone in the English building. It's beautiful. And that may be the word to describe the feeling, too.

Beautiful.


	4. Haikus In The Night

**CHAPTER THREE**

Christmas and New Years are two different stories. Christmas is the warm and fuzzies, the gift exchanges and the feelings. New Years is the cold, hard, emotionless partying and vomit of the holiday season.

It starts out with the boy from the room across from Room Eight coming for a visit. You don't recognize him. He's not very tall, his hair is black and his skin is tan. As soon as he starts talking, though, you recognize him. The scruffy, rough voice– he's the one who's always shouting and cursing. He introduces himself as Karkat. He introduces his roommate, who apparently was standing behind him the whole time, as the self-obsessed lisping hacker asshole who he hates. The room mate is tall with skin and hair like Karkat's in color, though his hair is less fluffy and more organized. He wears glasses with different colored lenses and introduces himself as Sollux. Karkat invites you and Jade to come hang out downstairs, because no one knows who you are and it wouldn't hurt to show your fucking pale-ass faces every once in a while so at least everyone knows who they're bunking with. He continues in this manner for a while, and you politely tune him out for the first thirty seconds before throwing a glance at his roommate, who shuts him up real fast. You and Jade agree to go downstairs and meet everyone.

There's a lot of names and faces for you to remember, but you think you've got it. There's Terezi and Vriska of Room Two, who you meet first. Vriska is introduced as a huge bitch by Karkat and Terezi is introduced as a 'crazy fucking blind chick'. Vriska has hair that's waist long and fluffy like Jade's, but it's much wilder and unruly then your roommate's and wears shades with one lens punched out. Terezi's hair is just past her shoulders and her glasses are bright red. Almost hard-to-look-at kind of red. Next door is Aradia and Nepeta. Aradia has hair like Vriska's but somehow larger and has a similar type of intuition as Jade, you quickly learn. She seems to like wearing brightly colored eyeliner. Nepeta wears one of those knitted animal hats that you see on teens sometimes in the form of a cat. Her hair's short and her eyes are startling and wide.

Across the hall is Eridan and Equius, known to Karkat and apparently many as 'The Two Losers That Live In Room Three And Both Have Names That Start With E', because for some reason their circle of friends aren't any good at coming up with short and catchy names as opposed to literal and long ones. Eridan, you discover, is a total hipster, but on a different, less ironic level then Dave, because everyone's on a different, less ironic level then Dave. Eridan has hair that sticks up and is dark brown with a large purple patch in front. He wears the hipster glasses too, and as it turns out loves scarves like you. Equius has shoulder length and sleek hair and seems to remain in a perpetual state of sweaty anger, to simplify Karkat's long description. He has a few missing teeth and broken glasses and looks like someone who spends a lot of time doing very little besides being strong. Next to those two is the room of Gamzee and Tavros. Gamzee has large hair and strange makeup that matches his strange obsession with clowns and Tavros has a mohawk but seems like the sweetest little thing. From what you understand, Tavros is frequently victimized because of his disability. He has a wheelchair. You'll make sure to interview him at another time for scientific purposes.

When Nepeta hears more of your being shown around by Karkat, she invites you inside to show you a chart she has of who's kissing who. Sollux and Aradia are on and off, right now it's on. Terezi and Karkat was apparently a thing once. Gamzee and Tavros just started almost happening, but not really. You guess you don't really understand all that much about this shipping or dating business. You realize, though, that to ask would be a foolish move on several levels.

The next day Karkat returns to invite you and Jade to something. A New Year's party sounds like a good idea to both of you at the time, so you agree. Since everyone in the English building and no one outside the English building is going, he decides just to host it there.

As it turns out, a New Year's party is a horrible idea. You're not sure who spikes the punch, but you're pretty sure it's Gamzee, who you see making out on the stairs with Tavros later. Vriska takes a group out to TP the staff building and you're pretty sure there will be a loss of privileges at a later date. Vriska and Terezi end up setting something on fire, too, but as far as you can tell that got mostly taken care of. Dave and Karkat got into a fight and Equius ended up joining in, which is how they both wound up with black eyes. You're pretty sure Nepeta kills something somewhere in there, too. You spend pretty much the whole time talking about scarves with Eridan, who isn't even all that fun to talk to because he's as pretentious as hell.

Which doesn't mean you don't have a killer headache the next day, because you do. Because Gamzee didn't do a half-assed job of spiking that punch. You kind of want to crawl into a hole somewhere, but you settle for the bed, and you spend the rest of the day-after trying to forget how much life seems to suck and furiously contemplating how your mother could possibly stand doing this all the time. But then, you figure, she's probably too drunk to know she has a hangover sometimes. You wonder what that's like, being so drunk you can't feel a hangover. You decide not to try it. You've pretty much sworn off drinking for life at this point.

School starts all too soon and the best you can do for yourself is smear on some makeup and drink tea. You've mostly recovered from New Year's by this point, but you've still spent the last two days in bed pretty much. You're aware of the fact that you look poorly, but the fact that Dave does too is consolation. He actually looks much worse because of the fight and because he did drink much more than you did. His hair is half matted and poorly swept into his right eye, the darkness of which you can actually see around the rim of his aviator shades, as well as they might conceal it. His skin is a sickly shade of pale. You feel bad for him almost, though not really considering he probably could taste the alcohol in the drink and drank it anyway and that he did pretty much start the fight with Karkat.

There are no pre-period classes on the day back from break, so you end up walking with Dave to the small snack and juice machine they had installed on the side of the English building the day before. When Dave saw you, he raised his eyebrows, and you raised one of yours at him. You exchanged greetings before deciding to walk down together.

Dave yells "Fuck you, Karkat!" at his neighbor's door as you pass, then similarly curses at Equius and Eridan's door as you pass it downstairs. You see Gamzee at the drink machine getting something called a 'Faygo' while simultaneously assaulting Tavros.

"You drink that crap?" Dave asks Gamzee, who unscrews the lid.

"I do my mother-fucker." Gamzee says, and it's not malicious but eerily calm. He takes a sip and Dave almost visibly recoils. You can see it because you know Dave, the almost wince and the shifting of weight. That's how you know he's repulsed.

You take a step forward and get yourself an iced tea, then another and another. You're going to put them all in your fridge and slowly enjoy them. When you step back, there's Gamzee and Tavros at it again with their public displays of affection. Tavros is blushing deeply and Gamzee is watching him with wide open brown eyes. Gamzee seems to be almost lifting Tavros out of his wheel-chair to kiss him; Gamzee is so tall and Tavros probably wouldn't be tall even if he could stand. Some of Gamzee's face paint is smearing onto Tavros's skin. It's the weirdest ever and kind of totally creepy so you have to turn away after a couple seconds. You look at Dave. Though you can't see his eyes, you can just tell that he is as disturbed as you are.

Over the next day, you watch Gamzee and Tavros, not their kissing but the people around them when they're kissing. For the most part they ignore it. And that's not a bad thing, but...

You'd expected something different. For this part of the country, for a school with students this pretentious and stuck in their ways. You'd expected a bit more homophobia. But there was none.

And then it happens, like it was bound to. One of Jade's most confusing intuitions, probably the most confusing one, starts to make sense. After a long day's work in school you go to your room to find Dave's over, and while you and Dave are honestly like siblings at this point you just need to sit down and get your homework done somewhere quiet so you can relax for the rest of the night.

You go out of your room and a few paces down the hall. Immediately you sense something off. The door is closed to room eight. Too many footsteps in a hall with six people. You open the door.

And there they are, the girls. One of them has pink glasses and hair to her hips and the other is a brunette with a messy pixie cut wearing a long red skirt and intense makeup. You take a step back into the hall. The girls look confused.

"Hi, I'm Feferi." the longer haired one says with a smile. She takes a couple steps toward you. "This is my cousin Kanaya. We just moved in, we got here last weekend."

"Hi." the one said to be Kanaya says. It's a couple seconds, and you guess to break the silence, Kanaya says, "I like how you did your makeup."

"Thanks." you say slowly. Then you regain your composure. "I'm sorry for disturbing you in your unpacking, I occasionally used to come here to study, it was empty and quiet, but. I think I'll go now. I hope you find the school's shallow culture to your liking. If you're not too busy, I make dinner regularly so I hope you could find the time to come over and eat." You close the door and rush, slightly flustered, back to your room. Dave looks up, obviously confused. He's sitting next to Jade on the bed. Jade smiles and looks at you.

"It's happened, hasn't it?" she says. "Don't worry, I'll try to keep our place empty for you to do your studying."

"I just invited them to dinner." you say. "Do we have enough food for another two guests?"

"Who?" Dave asks.

"We've got new neighbors." Jade says with a smile. "I think they moved in a couple days ago. In Room Eight."

"What?" Dave asks. "In the empty room? Why'd they just move over in the middle of the year?"

They do come over to dinner, and that's when Dave gets his answer. Kanaya is Feferi's cousin, but Kanaya's parents are always away so she ended up pretty much living part time over at Feferi's house. Then Feferi's parents got relocated through work and she didn't really know how to handle the change. She couldn't stay at her old school and she couldn't go live with Kanaya so she ended up deciding to board here, the closest boarding to where they were moving. Kanaya went too, tired of her old school, like you, and tired by the lack of opportunity, like you.

Kanaya wants to become a designer. She has so many ideas and not enough outlets. Thank goodness for her this school has a sewing club. She's glad she made the change already, because even if the sewing club is horrible at least there is one, which is a great improvement from her last school. Feferi, on the other hand, misses her last school a bit. She misses her friends and she misses the clubs she was signed up for and the teachers. She doesn't complain about it at all though, because she's still really looking forward to going to school here.

Before they leave, Kanaya thanks you for the meal and compliments your cooking. You made pasta again, but you put in extra effort, and it felt nice to think that extra effort was appreciated.

The next day, you get the book. It's got a thick cover and a sturdy spine and it's large, almost the size of the top of your microwave when it's closed. Every page is lined, and every page is late. You know before you see the note that it's your mother's late Christmas present that she forgot to pop into the mail on time, something she thought you'd like that she saw somewhere so she just _had_ to get it for you. It's always the same way. You text a thank you to your mom and finish your homework.

As soon as you're done with your homework and with your violin, you are distracted by the book, the urge to write. And not just to write as in to compose as you can do with a word processing document and a keyboard, but to write the old fashioned way. You grab a pen and flip it open to the first page. The thought of writing a story is just too tempting to resist.

But what should you write, you wonder briefly? What story? You decide to write the story of the people around you, something to look back on when you're aged and sentimental. And you guess that means it's your story too.

It winds up being a journal that's part diary and part random writings. You decide to recap with all the details from the very beginning of the year. Haikus wind up finding a way into it too, and poems that should have no place in it.

One day, after you've finished your homework, you bump into Kanaya on the way down to the snack machine. Her lips are a startling shade of green and she's wearing a pink and purple sun dress with an interesting symbol on the front. Your eyes lock momentarily, and you're forced to excuse yourself. You go to your room and sit down, writing. Anything will do, but you settle for another haiku.

"_Eloquence in full,_

_Her difference is beauty,_

_Unburied treasure_."

You know it's crap but you couldn't resist. Haikus are just so much fun to write, and of course it's all about the haikus, not about anything else. At least that's what you tell yourself.

One day you walk into the cafeteria and there's a new lunch lady, a different one. The other one comes back the next day, and you don't comment on it, because people have sick days sometimes. It happens. But then she makes it a pattern, disappears every few days for a few days. You start to worry. You talk to her one day and find out that she isn't doing well. Her lungs have been failing, her breathing is getting more difficult. She's been going to the doctor and she knows that she has cancer. It's not as bad as it could be, it's just a little tumor. It's going to be removed soon. You knit her five scarves.

When you see her, she looks worse. She says it's working. She says she's healing. You don't say anything. She likes the scarves.

You run into Kanaya on the way back, and she looks confused. She doesn't understand. You don't invite her over for dinner again, but she comes anyway, to check on you she says. To see that you're okay. You're more sarcastic and cynical to her then she deserves. You avoid her a bit after that.

But she finds you still, she's there where you want to be. She starts sitting with your friends at lunch, she appears sitting under the tree outside drawing. You don't ask what and she doesn't tell you.

But then one day you do ask, and she does tell you. It's clothing. Clothing that she's going to make, clothing that she's going to wear, maybe clothing that she's going to make for other people. And what she's drawing when you ask her is beautiful, a sleeveless red floor length dress with what looks like the patterns of leaves all over it and a black belt at the waist. You ask who or what it's for. She says she's wearing it to the school dance. You remember at that moment that there's a school dance, and that you don't have anything to wear to it or anyone to go with.

Kanaya offers to make you something, and you seem to not be able to express enough gratitude for that. You go back to your room and start working on what you consider to be a proper thanks; a scarf. You have more trouble coming up with a pattern and knitting style for this scarf then you've had with any other scarf you've made so far. Possibly because you wouldn't want to offend Kanaya's fashion sense. You stop by later to ask her about it, but you see that she's got a sewing machine and is hard at work, so you decide not to visit then.

You decide on the pattern and everything on your own, dark green and wide but flat as you can make it. You work hard on this scarf, choosing the softest yarn the school has to offer. It's going to be a masterpiece, you can feel it. You also feel a twinge of regret that you will not be keeping this scarf, but at the same time you're excited about whatever she's going to make for you and you know this scarf can not be for you. It's elegant and dark and her in so many ways.

You walk by her room one day and see the door is open, she must have forgotten to close it entering. She's sewing again, bent over the red dress that's going to be hers. The sewing machine hums and you relax. The noise is soothing, calming. Her fingers work skillfully with the fabric, the thread, the machine. They're graceful as they remove the empty spool and replace it with a new one, as they re-thread the needle and as she sets out to work again. You smile. She's so concentrated, her eyebrows almost furrow, but they stay raised, arched and thin and dark.

You leave her to her work and return to your own, picking up your sewing needles immediately and grabbing the rolls of yarn from your drawer, continuing her scarf. You loose yourself in this work, the sound of the needles clicking together every so often when they meet is like the sound of your own breath to you, silent and unnoticed. Forty five minutes into it, you hear a creaking and look up. You left the door open, and you see the back of a pale ankle, a pale heel, as someone walks away. Almost as if they had been watching you work.

That night you stay up later then usual writing. Journaling, making poems, everything. You write another haiku.

"_A call from the floor,_

_the whispers of gentle moving,_

_tell me she was here._"

Three days before the dance you talk to Kanaya. You don't talk about _the_ scarf or _the_ dress, but you talk about scarves and dresses. You talk about futures and goals and inspirations. As someone who hopes to be a designer in the future, Jean Paul Gaultier is a huge inspiration to Kanaya. She says the way he crafts his dresses is genius, the way his ensembles capture both the female and male physique, the way they portray mortality and capture the future in an innovative fashion. Her greatest hope in life is to meet the man responsible for some of modern culture's most beautiful haute couture. You don't understand some of what she's talking about, but you can tell that it excites her. She is passionate about this. The corners of her lips tug gently into a faint smile as she speaks, her hands hover off her sides and occasionally flit up to describe her words, shape them. You tell her about writing, about knitting, about inspiration in your terms, the usefulness of all that. You aren't as passionate as she is, not quite, and you almost question yourself about your dreams, but you don't. You write about that, the energy that leaks off of her when she talks about clothing design. "_The poise and the elegance is her, but she is then a mask. What alternative there is, that she is so careful and poised within, is equally as appealing and frightening. The inspired passion that she shows at thoughts of creation and beauty is a chip in that mask or a spark in that careful, hollowed body, tinting her flesh of pink and humanizing the distant girl._"

The day of the dance brings chaos on the right side of the dorm. The boys mostly stay tucked away in their rooms as they prepare, but the girls move in between rooms, shuffling around to different locations for makeup and changing and opinions. You and Jade wind up with both of your makeup kits in Kanaya and Feferi's room, opening your room up as an extra changing room. Feferi changes in the bathroom of her and Kanaya's room, and when she comes out you see she's wearing a brightly colored dress. Jade changes in your room and when she returns you catch a glimpse of her dress. It's knee length and blue, strapless with a metallic looking belt and ruffled skirt. Kanaya smiles, which is rare and beautiful, and presses a bundle of dark cloth into your hand. You escape to your room and she goes into her bathroom to change.

You have a chance to look at the dress and it's perfect. Form fitting and sleeveless, black and just past your knees, with a sweetheart neckline and a thin but long pink ribbon loosely sewn on to the fabric around your waist. The back dangles to the floor, not yet in a bow. You'll have to ask for help tying it later. You change into it and you smile, it fits you well in both senses. You take the scarf with you back to the other room and smile when you see your three closest female friends smiling at you.

Kanaya looks beautiful in the dress she designed, the one you saw the other day when she was sketching. It's amazing to see how she brings her sketches to life. She takes a step forward and her fingertips trail lightly around your waist, tracing around the ribbon to where it hangs loosely in the back. She slowly and neatly ties it into a small bow so that the ends dangle but do not touch the floor. You only realize her hands on your waist after they've gone, after she's taken a few steps back and started reaching for the makeup. You watch her apply eyeliner, mascara, lipstick. Her lipstick is green, which strikes you as a bit odd but like her. Yours is a deep purple.

You all walk to the gym for the dance. Aradia goes with Equius, who you don't remember being a thing but apparently are, Tavros goes with Gamzee, Jade goes with Dave, and the rest of you go alone. But it's fun, because when you get there everything's miserably bright and too loud and teenage, and all the rich kids are there making a big deal with their fancy dresses. But you couldn't care less about their dresses when yours is so perfect.

Suddenly the DJ seems to switch out and there are partner dances for several songs in a row. You dance with John and Dave, and Eridan, and Equius. Dave would be dancing with Jade but you two needed to have at least one friendly dance together, you're like siblings. Equius would be with Aradia but she got angry and stormed off and you offered to dance with him in the mean-time. Eridan came alone but he followed Feferi for the majority of the night. You offer to dance with him and he seems grateful, which scares you a little bit.

When the last dance of the evening comes around, you feel as if you have exhausted all your options for partners. There is one partner left that does not occur to you, not until you see her smiling across the room, see her walking towards you. You turn to face her as she approaches.

"Enjoying the dance?" you ask Kanaya. She continues smiling and chuckles.

"Are you?" she asks in reply. She tilts her head a little and watches your reaction.

"All of these boys have two left feet and are so awkward, I just... I mean, I guess the dance itself is alright, but dancing isn't much fun without a good partner, not that I can speak for myself as a good dance partner." you say. You feel a blush nearly creeping up to your cheeks at your babbling. You wonder briefly what kind of an air-headed fool you've been turned into, and by what, but you think you might know the answer already. And that answer might smile at you and take a step forward.

Kanaya reaches out a little bit and speaks. "I couldn't agree more." she says. "The shallow culture here and the behavior at this dance is nearly offensive to me, though I suppose there are some things that make it slightly more bearable."

"And what might be one of those things?" you ask. Kanaya pauses and glances over her shoulder, then looks back. Here gaze is piercing. You see her smile has changed almost to a smirk.

"It looks like the last dance is starting. Do you have a partner yet?" she asks. You part your lips slightly, close them, open them again, swallow.

"I, I don't." you finally say. She takes another step forward.

At that moment, you hear behind you a voice.

"Hi." Sollux says. You turn in mild surprise. "It seems I've found myself without a partner for this last dance. Care to join me?" He's staring down at you. You glance at Kanaya, and she nods, though there seems to be a trace of another emotion buried behind her smile, something you don't have time to detect as you hustle after Sollux onto the dance floor. You peek over at her later, halfway through the song, and see she's dancing with Eridan. You see as well Gamzee and Tavros dancing together. Tavros moves in his wheelchair while Gamzee holds his hand. Such a sweet gesture. You wonder, hypothetically of course, if you could ever be as free and open with your emotions as they are, if you had emotions of any strength aimed towards any specific person. If your emotions would be accepted as theirs are. If two your age could be open as a couple not universally recognized, why the idea of you maybe being in a couple not universally recognized makes you a little bit uneasy, makes you unsure.

After that last dance, you are among the first to exit the gym and return to their lodging. Your lodging is, of course, the dorm, where you expect to find comfort but instead find very little. You don't want to take off the dress just yet because it's one of the most beautiful things you've worn for such a long time, it makes you feel special, so you're wearing it when you crawl onto your bed and pull out the book. You open to the page where you're at now in writing and recount the events of the night with as little emotion as possible, before writing in a haiku at the end of it. Your knuckles are white from their grip on the pen as you scrawl out words onto the page.

"_What if I am not_

_As thought to be? What if I_

_love a wrong beauty?_"

Jade comes back to the room, escorted by Dave, a half an hour or so after you started writing. You're finished by now, but your words are leading to deeper thought and contemplation within you. You sit with legs crossed on the bed and the blankets wrinkled around you, face buried in your hands. You peek up as Jade enters the room and Dave pokes his head in to say goodnight to the both of you before he returns to his own room. You notice his hair is a tiny bit mussed, his face is a tiny bit flushed and his lips glimmer in a way unnatural to all creatures. You suspect he and Jade have been kissing, and decide not to comment on it.

Jade sits on her bed and lets out a contented sigh, while you just resume contemplation. Your mind's endless cacophony of 'what if' is interrupted minutes later as Jade begins to speak.

"So, how did you like the dance?" she asks. You try not to grimace at the thought of the disaster that the night was. Well, mostly. You think the dress might make up for it though.

"Truthfully unenjoyable. I'm not sure I'll like parties when I'm older if they're all like this dance was." you say. "I'm sure you enjoyed yourself, though. It looks like it."

"Oh, yeah." Jade says. "I think it was fun. Maybe a bit too... everything, but mostly it was fun. I'm sure it would have been fun for you too if you'd gone with... someone."

"Someone?" you ask. "Is that a specific sort of someone, or a general sort?"

"Well..." Jade says. "Both, I guess. But I'm not going to say anything." You sigh.

The night of the dance is another sort of sleepless night for you. You lie in your night gown waiting for rest but it doesn't come, and you feel again the impulse to walk the halls. You climb out of bed, stretch a little, slip on some slippers and sneak out the door. You love the sound of the rubber soles padding against the ground, as eerie as you might occasionally find it. It stays the same for you, and some sameness comforts you. You decide today to step outside for a bit, a breath of fresh air to ease your lungs and bring a slower pace of breathing. You step outside and find it's cold, you almost put on the scarf in your hand but you don't. It's not yours. You haven't given it to Kanaya yet and you don't know why you've brought it. It was impulsive.

You round the corner, and you're surprised to find yourself by the snack machines. You're even more surprised to see another there, sitting on the bench nearby.

In the moonlight she is glorious, the way her skin is illuminated and the way her hair seems to radiate the rich darkness of it's color. Kanaya sits in a gown similar to yours though yellow, and she wears leggings beneath it. She's reading a book you've never heard of and with the turn of a page her expression is of someone indulging shamelessly in a sweet pleasure. You take a step forward and startle yourself. You know the noise your slippers make in the night, but still they startle you in the silence. They seem to startle her too, because her eyes are wide when she looks up. In an instant she stands, moves her hands to protect herself. But then she sees it's only you, and she visibly relaxes.

Neither of you speak for almost a minute. You simply look at her, thinking a million things, and at the same time you wonder what thought might cross her head as she looks at you.

"I..." you finally say. Your voice is a whisper, though it's unlikely anyone would hear you in the night. "I never got to thank you properly for the dress. It's beautiful. I'd like to... I'd like to give you this." You slowly lift the scarf, untie it, take a step forward. She moves towards you, meeting you halfway. She doesn't immediately make any motion to grab it, so you lift it and loop it around her neck yourself. Tug one end lightly, the other end, arrange it around her neck in a fashionable and simple way. You love the way this color looks against her skin. There's silence for another few moments, and this time she's the one to break it.

"Thank you." she says. "It's... beautiful." Her fingers stroke the fabric around her neck and she smiles. She looks down, then up again to meet your eyes. "You know, I would have asked you to dance if Sollux hadn't." You don't know why she's saying this, you don't understand, while at the same time, you do. It's confusing, and you hate that, hate confusion. You're much better at understanding things then being confused by them.

"Well..." you say, "I think I would have accepted your offer." She reaches over and lets her hand trail down your arm before grabbing your hand. You've held hands before with plenty of friends, but you feel like this could be different. You both look down at your hands for a minute or a two in silence. She looks up, you can feel her eyes, so you meet them.

"It must be midnight about now." she says, and you realize she's right, though you can see her perfectly. Another minute passes and she lets go of you're hand. She grabs her book, and with slow steps she returns to you. "We should both be sleeping. Why don't we return to our rooms? I'll walk you back." she says with a smile.

"Thank you." you say, smiling in return. It's nice for her to offer, even if the offer is slightly ridiculous. You smile when she opens your door for you upon returning, you smile when she waves goodbye and closes the door quietly behind her. You smile less when she's gone. You still smile. Before you sleep, you take out your notebook and write more, and for once not a haiku but a short poem that isn't that you like.

"_A page turned by long fingers in the pale glow of the moon._

_What startles may be a pleasant surprise to both,_

_One stalking long halls in darkness and one indulging and bathed in light._

_For half a grin they may both be swimming in light,_

_For half a grin their footsteps may both echo in dark halls._

_For both there is a smile that is more than either._

_From dark halls one wonders at each half grin and smile,_

_what does a smile from each buy them?_

_If each is weighed, how long to take? What easy alternative?_

_Draining every smile gets nothing of worth._

_Anything of value is nothing of worth,_

_perhaps the less it is worth the more it is valued._

_What is not redeemed for worth may be valued by both,_

_A book closed under the flickering yellow glow of a faded bulb._"

Even if you have had your walk, sleep is not easy this night. Thoughts keep you awake, the contemplation and the things that all come unbidden. What it means that she smiles as she does for you, that you as you do for her. You can't or perhaps don't want to calculate this, to figure it out.

The next day the whole of your dorm is blessed with a pleasant or possibly unpleasant surprise; John's acquired a television. By what means only you, Jade, and Dave know immediately, and the means come in the form of an overdue Christmas present from John's father. It's bulky and it only plays DVD's, but this isn't a problem for John at all. He's got so many DVD's, and he's ready to show everyone he can his favorite movies, as he's been promising for so long. As expected, it's like the kitchen set all over again. Though most of the boarders have computers with disc drives, it's not quite the same as watching it on an actual television screen, though that television screen may only be about twice the size of the computer screen. At the beginning of the year, you would have found it completely unfathomable that John and Dave's room would be a hot-spot for date night, but somehow that's what happens. You go to their room one day and find Sollux and Feferi in there, because apparently that's a thing now, and Karkat trying to push all of these RomComs more than half the people in the English building wouldn't touch onto John and making suggestions for great date night movies while John fights back with a ferocity that you've only seen him use before when discussing Betty Crocker. Dave ends up shoving both of them out, because it's his room too, and picks for the uneasy couple.

You end up going over to John's with three heated bags of popcorn and drinks you'd refrigerated that you'd gotten from the machine. It's Thursday then, and somehow Thursday becomes the invitation-only movie night. It's Dave's brother's birthday, and though Dave hadn't really suggested it you end up watching _TamPopo_, a Japanese movie, in honor of him, though you have no clue how it honors him in any way. Kanaya joins you that night, and you make a point of getting more popcorn from your room every time there's another food erotica scene. Jade doesn't look all that comfortable either, and neither does Kanaya, who actually offers to get the drinks one time. You don't understand some things, like the whole point of the movie, though you guess it's supposed to just be silly and food themed. You like it despite yourself.

The next week you all watch _Monty Python_, and there's an endless stream of references coming from John until the next week, when Karkat comes and you watch _Twilight_ though none of you really want to see it. It's more than an hour of mocking everything said and done, and at the end you notice that Dave is sniffling a bit. Apparently he likes it in a way that's so complicated you shouldn't even try to understand. He doesn't like it so much when some of the guys 'accidentally' bump one of Feferi's little makeup bags and glitter powder gets all over his face. Everyone thinks it's hilarious, besides Jade and him, and somehow he ends up keeping some of it on as an ironic reference to something you just don't understand.

One Friday you and Kanaya both have nothing going on. She bumps into you in the hall and casually suggests you two go watch a movie together. She goes ahead into John and Dave's room, and when you go to get the popcorn Jade throws a tube of lipstick over to you. You're not sure what this is, but you figure whatever it is it wouldn't hurt to look nice and use it.

It's one of those nights Karkat inserts himself into the room for the sole purpose of dominating the screening and setting everything up just right to be romantic. You end up watching Valentines Day, because it's also one of the nights that John retreats to the bathroom with his computer and just gives up arguing. It's a sweet movie, and once or twice those gushy feelings get flowing, but Karkat probably prevents more with his total involvement in the movie, peering at the screen from over his bowl of popcorn, and the occasional staring. Because for some reason he stares at you and Kanaya at random intervals.

You and Kanaya walk down to the drinks dispenser to replenish your supply of iced teas and you notice she's wearing your scarf. You also notice that there isn't anyone around outside. She says how she likes the scarf, again, and smiles. You wish you had a picture of her that had her smiling in it, and you feel like you might get that picture someday if you keep spending time together. She holds your hand again, and it isn't like that time at night when the shadows were larger and thoughts seemed to echo in the silence. It's bright and sunny and a little bit cold and people are still awake and doing things. But you don't let go. She helps you carry the drinks and as you head back up you tell her you don't know what to say. She tells you things that flatter you, that make you blush. She helps you put all of the drinks in your fridge and says she should be heading back to her room, designs to work on, ideas to foster and to bring to life. You know how it is.

And then there's something at the door, you guess it's what you've been waiting for but not what you've been expecting. Chaste and quick, a peck on the lips. Her confession, you guess, her wordless portrayal of emotion. She's gone before you even have time to react. Jade doesn't say anything, she's not the type to judge, and you feel she probably saw this coming. You take out a pocket mirror and notice a faint tint of green on your red lipstick.

How should you react? You're not sure, standing there, looking at that reflection, dumbstruck. You don't know what it means, you don't know what she wanted it to mean. You're happy, happier than you should be, you feel. Too many thoughts and nothing to do about them.

Nothing to do about the thoughts, but not nothing to do. You take out yarn and knit. You're going to make a hat, it's going to be for yourself. But even as you knit you're writing in your head.

"_She feels as I feel._

_Too much joy and too much thought._

_She is as I am._"

Do you want a relationship with Kanaya? Is it even possible to have a real relationship at this age? Maybe the more appropriate question is if you want what a typical eighth grade relationship has to offer if it's with Kanaya, if you're okay with having feelings for another female that lets you ask these questions? You can't answer those questions, you don't know how to. You decide to think of it on different terms. If she were to kiss you again, would you be okay with that? Were you okay with that last kiss? If more people than Jade knew about the kiss, would you be okay with that? Would she? It's so much to think about. You're lost in thought and knitting when Jade talks to you.

"So how was that?" she asks. You look up, slightly shocked.

"Hm?" you ask. The knitting needles hit each-other loudly, making you wince.

"With Kanaya, when you... went out. How was that? Did you have fun?" she asks.

"I, uh, yeah, I guess." you say. "I'm not really sure, I mean, um." And finally you hear what these thoughts sound like when voiced; an incoherent trail of noises. You want to face-palm from that, but you're not sure if that would be a good idea, considering that you're holding the knitting needles. For once you wish that you weren't the one with all the psychoanalysis skills, that Jade would be able to interpret your every jumbled syllable and tell you exactly what was going on with you, tell you what you should do next. Wish that someone would just place you on the Kinsey scale and there wouldn't be any arguments or confusion, because you're not sure where you lie there at this point. All of the people you would normally talk to about this don't seem like they'd actually be very helpful. Nothing Jade says is ever straight-forward, it's always omniscient and confusing. Dave, as close to siblings as you may be, seems like he would suck at giving advice. Karkat might be good with relationships but he doesn't work well with lots of emotions. You decide there's only one person you can really talk to about this, so you go to see them. You get up and walk straight into Kanaya's room. Feferi, you notice, is gone.

There are few words said, though you thought there might be many. Not too many questions asked. You walk in thinking you're going to have this long talk with Kanaya, but you realize several things as soon as you walk in the door. You walk in the door and you're happy, just by seeing her. So you know your feelings, though you don't know hers. You might ask her another day.

You just sit and watch her sew, sit beside her as her fingers move fabric around under the point of the needle. As her ideas spring to life.


	5. The Trip

**CHAPTER FOUR**

Not a relationship, really, just kisses and movies and dinners and time spent working together on separate things, you knitting or writing and her sewing or sketching out her designs. You ask Kanaya more about design, and she asks you more about writing. You tell her about publishing, about how you want to be a published novelist and psychologist in the future. You talk about teachers and classes sometimes, and sometimes you talk about the kids in the English building. One day you're sitting out on the lawn together, it's springtime and the grass is a pale green. You think it looks nice with the scarf you made her, which you note she is wearing. It looks nice against her dark, form fitting designer jeans and her black top. It looks nice against _her_. That's the day you hear about the trip.

Though a week across the country with two teachers and several classmates doesn't initially sound appealing, you wind up deciding to go. Kanaya's going, after all, and going to so many museums would be fun for you. You're a museum person, museums are like third homes to you. And plus, the east coast is the east coast, even if it isn't quite where you're from. Your mother pays the trip cost, and through a series of meetings you learn that most of the English building is going, with the exception of Dave, Jade, John, and Feferi. It doesn't quite feel right to do something so big without your three closest friends, but Kanaya will be there so you feel like it'll be fine. Everyone starts packing more than a week before you're scheduled to leave.

You're surprised when they still remember your fourteenth birthday what with all the trip excitement, when you walk in and see that they've somehow gathered the right materials to make a microwave cake. You see it might have taken time and lots of tries, if the way Sollux is cursing quietly and furiously scrubbing the inside of the microwave is any indication. Because '_they_' had somehow expanded from your three closest friends and Kanaya to everyone in the English building, though you don't get along with all of them quite spectacularly. You can say they're almost your friends, as absurd as it feels to think that. You wonder sometimes why they would like you, the dark pseudo goth that judges too quickly and talks too little. And you don't ever get an answer to your question when you start wondering that, but you decide to let it be. Even as an odd-one-out you could almost fit with this group of people, because you suppose everyone in the English building is sort of used to being an odd-one-out.

You get presents you don't feel like you deserve for your birthday, all of them from the people of the English building. Jade gave you a sweet little gift, as did John and Dave. Kanaya made you the most beautiful pull-over sweater, orange with an intricate yellow sun on the front and a dark orange hood. You couldn't love it any more than you already do, it's the best gift you've received since the dress she made you, though you wouldn't tell anyone that. It's special because it's from Kanaya, because of how hard you know she worked on it. You might tell her that. You don't, though.

The school week comes off to a close quickly and you find yourself rushing to put the last bits into your bag before you leave for the trip. You're ten minutes from departure from the school on a bus to go to the airport when Jade speaks.

"You don't have to go." she says. "You didn't want to in the beginning. Rose–What if something happens? Something could happen." You laugh a little bit at this, then see how completely serious she is.

"Jade, I'll be fine." you say. "It's only a week, nothing besides lots of pictures will happen."

"Just promise you'll be safe, and keep everyone else safe too." she says. "Don't get lost."

"Jade, I'm not in third grade." you say. A silence follows. "Yes, Jade, I promise. I have to leave, I'll see you again in a week." You almost walk out the door but double back quickly to grab your notebook. It's unlike you to forget anything important, which makes you wonder. But there isn't much time for wondering, you take off and run to the front gates where the bus is waiting.

You're the last one on, you nearly didn't make it. But you did, and that's what matters. You sit next to Kanaya and talk about the room assignments. No one has their room keys yet, they won't get them until they get to the hotel, but they've got their roommates written out on a piece of paper. Gamzee, Karkat, and Eridan have a room together while Tavros, Equius, and Sollux will be sharing another room. Tavros and Gamzee requested a room together like they had on campus but all of the boys requested that they not be put together because none of them wanted to share a room with a couple that likes to make out a lot. You, Kanaya, and Vriska are roommates while Aradia, Nepeta, and Terezi will be rooming next to you. There are more kids going that aren't friends with you, the kids from the other Dorm building. You choose to ignore them, but they glare at you English kids every once in a while for no apparent reason. A feud and rivalry between the two buildings is started for no obvious reason.

The airport is awful as always and you quietly laugh at all the others who don't fly places often and don't understand how things work. The plane ride is the most horrific thing you've ever experienced, because you get placed right between Terezi and Vriska. Seat switching is not allowed, or you would have traded Nepeta for that isle seat right by Kanaya in a heartbeat.

When you arrive there's a day's worth of activities planned out. You start the trip in Virginia, which isn't quite as exciting as other places, but you like it. It seems peaceful and nice. From your window at the hotel room you see rolling hills thick with two or three types of rich green native trees with the occasional large red brick house in the middle. You break off from the main group with Kanaya and a few others at Colonial Williamsburg when you're finally allowed to wander the area without the horribly boring tour guide you were forced to follow for more than three hours of very informative speeches about everything with any slight historical significance. Your favorite part was the water break, where you got to try a strawberry flavored drink from a soda machine tucked behind a wooden fence. The few of you go into some shops and buy some things, learn what little you don't already know from some conveniently placed informative signs, but mostly wander and try not to cause any trouble.

Lunch is probably more informative in a useful way from certain perspectives. You go to some college or other with a large dining hall filled with buffets and you discover the beauty of a waffle iron, because they have that there. Your first thought is that you need to make the perfect waffle with this and the second is that you absolutely must get a waffle maker like this and a year's supply of batter because that would make breakfasts so much easier and so much better. Unfortunately, most of the foods accepted as breakfast foods are extremely difficult to cook in a microwave. You and your friends must suffer through bowl upon bowl of cereal turned from stale to soggy by the hands of milk, but you may not have to endure such a fate if only you were in possession of this waffle maker. Breakfasts at your place could become legendary.

Though you at first think lunch to be the greatest thing ever, you quickly learn that weary, hungry, and immature eighth graders are prone to fight each other when even only slightly agitated, so you watch your step a little more carefully. Even still, lunch s great, even for the sake of having a thirty minute break in a heavily scheduled day.

You find that you practically collapse into bed at the end of the day. The hotel's nice, but you take little notice. There are only two beds and Vriska claims one for herself, so Kanaya will be sharing a bed with you. You don't think about it too much.

You go out to get ice from the lobby, and there you see, of course, Tavros and Gamzee making out again. but you realize you don't even bat an eyelash because you're so used to it by now, such public displays of affection. _Everyone_'s used to it. On the way back you notice that Karkat's locked Eridan out of their room, and Sollux has left the door open to his room, so you can hear perfectly his quiet curses and Equius's profuse apologies as he rushes for a towel, which leads to the one possible explanation, which is that he's broken something again.

Just another day for you, you realize that all the shenanigans from your friends have started to feel normal. Routine, almost.

You see that Kanaya's talking to Dave on the chat client you signed up for at the beginning of the year and can't help but wonder what about. Vriska's in the shower so you don't have to worry about her making any awkward situations right now. You pull out your own laptop and sit back to back with Kanaya. You log onto the chat client and click to open a chat with her. You type a simple 'Hello' and after a moment ask her how she is, what she's up to.

Vriska comes out of the shower soon and unpacks more of her stuff onto her bed. It's already piled with useless junk from various tourist shops she must have visited today. Kanaya has idled the chat with you as she attends to other conversations, so your full attention is on Vriska. You watch as she takes a cardboard box from her bag and opens the top. She pulls out of it one of those crappy kid's magic eight balls. She starts to walk over to the one small desk in the room, probably to place it. You let your eyes flicker down to the computer screen for a second, and then you hear the crash. You and Kanaya both look up, you stand up and ready yourself, for what you're not sure.

Dark liquid drips from the dark shell, emptying. It flows to the edge of the table. A towel lands in your hand and you rush over, stopping it, as Vriska stands shocked with her hands in the air. She dropped it and now the rest of you were cleaning her mess.

"It's bad luck, I'm sure, to break an eight ball." Kanaya says, and Vriska snorts. But you can see on her face that she takes it to heart, for no reason that you understand. Kanaya picks up the little plastic piece with all the fortunes on it and Vriska almost looks startled.

"Doesn't actually matter if you throw it away. I'll do it, you've already cleaned up enough." Vriska says. Kanaya tosses it over to her. You watch as Kanaya turns away and Vriska sneakily pockets the little plastic piece. You raise your eyebrow, because you don't understand what Vriska has to hide in taking it. You decide you don't want to understand.

The next day there's more of the same, more of the re-enactment sights for wars, Civil War, Revolutionary War. It's tiring. You finally return and it's your turn to take a shower, so you do. The hot water is relaxing, the steam is nice, the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner are free to you and so therefore good.

You come out of the shower and _see_ Kanaya without makeup for the first time. It's not just a fleeting glimpse like you've had before. When she goes to bed at night she leaves on some of the makeup usually, but tonight it looks like not. Her skin is a shade paler, a difference so minute you're not sure, it could just be the lighting. Her eyelashes are browner, bringing out the brown in her hair and eyebrows. They're so dark you usually can't tell if they're really black or just that dark shade of brown, but you can now. Her lips are naturally pale, which is something that surprises you.

More than anything, you want to run your thumb along those lips, kiss them, but you don't. There's no definition for your relationship, and Vriska's here. Somehow she makes things different. You instead settle for walking over, sitting on the bed, crawling up behind her, peering over her shoulder. She's drawing again, sketching, designing. A dress again this time, with more angles then many. A sleeveless white turtle neck look with what looks almost like a sleeveless, black v-neck over that. A thick white stripe paints the middle and jut above the left knee the black portion of the skirt of the dress parts to reveal a layer of white beneath it. Two little slitty looking marks decorate the edge of the black cloth, stretching over to about where the right knee would be. They're blank.

If this dress is to be for Kanaya, you know what color would belong there, even if you aren't an expert on design and fashion the way she is. You lean forward, reaching around her for a colored pencil.

"I think this color would look nice there." you say, plucking a medium shade of green from the box. You see her smiling as she takes the pencil from your hand and colors the spots green. You smile at that. You write about how you helped Kanaya choose a color when you're writing in your journal. You write about the trip, about the things that you did during the day. You write a haiku, because you always write haikus it seems.

"_The gentle relief_

_of hot water and cool drink_

_is precious to all._"

"What are you writing?" Kanaya asks as you finish up.

"A haiku." you say, and read it out to her. She smiles.

"It's lovely." she says. You get up to refill the ice bucket before curfew and she gets up to buy herself an iced tea from the machine. There's something strung tight between you as you walk together down the hall, a tension you can't rub off or ignore. You get the ice and she gets her tea and you notice that for once Gamzee and Tavros aren't making out by the soda machine.

There's an instant's break between when you finish putting ice in the ice bucket and when Kanaya kisses you, and that instant isn't long enough for you to see it coming. You almost drop the ice bucket. She rests her hands on your hip and waist as you kiss her back. Maybe twenty seconds pass.

"We should get back to the room." Kanaya says with a smile. Her cheeks are a little bit pink and you think they're beautiful like that, naturally pink, just skin with no makeup._ She's _beautiful like that.

Late at night you wonder as you lie beside her, you think towards the future. You can feel her breathing, the way the bedsheets shift at every inhale, exhale. You can feel her body heat, radiating off of her. She's colder than most people, you know from the few times you've held her hands, but she's still warm to you at night. You think about the kissing, you wonder if it holds any deeper meaning.

When you were younger, you never thought you might be different by the standards you're used to. You've never had any trouble accepting other people being different by those standards, though, because to you it never mattered. Sometimes you had trouble accepting people accepting others being different, because your opinion of the human race sank so low at times that even the faintest morality became surprising to you. But for some reason now _you_ are the one who's different and it's strange to think about, because it's you and not them, not all those people you pass by on the streets or the smiling faces on the television or those couple of kids at school.

You've always been different in other ways, with your interests and your talents and the way you look and act. But you knew about all that already. This confuses you and scares you the way it does because you're just finding out about it now, because it means something more than what headband you're going to wear to school. It means a whole different future than what you'd imagined.

What you'd imagined was everything that met the status quo; a husband and children and not quite a white picket fence but something along those lines. You'd have a stable job and money enough to support your family, probably not something exciting like a meteorologist as your mother had been for a while but maybe you could be a secretary. None of it had ever really sounded appealing to you, the husband or the job or the suburban house. Maybe kids, eventually. You'd just assumed that all of that would sound more alluring as you aged, that it was something that came with adulthood.

So in a way, the full realization that you are this _different_ person is a relief to you, though you still can't bring yourself to say it out loud. You started noticing you weren't like the rest last year when all of the others started wanting what you had assumed came with adulthood, not necessarily the stable job and the picket fence but the husband and children. You didn't want that, not yet. You kept waiting, thinking you would, but you didn't, while all of your friends kept on. You skipped past the whole different thing and straight to being wrong. Maybe you were built wrong, maybe you weren't like others were supposed to be. You started to think you weren't like them in some specific ways you hadn't realized before in the locker room before P.E. class.

That's what ignited the drama, that's what caused all the trouble through the rest of seventh grade. It was among other things that made it such a bad year. You started to talk to someone, someone who told you they were trustable. They talked to someone else who promised them the same thing, and the cycle continued until nobody even cared about trust anymore.

You feel freed, freed by the realization of your difference. You don't have to want the husband, which you suppose is the center of all of this. It's like without the assumed husband there isn't the assumed job as a secretary and the assumed white picket fence. Because you feel like you know more about who you are now, you know more of what you're going to grow up to be.

But then again, there's still the uncertainty. Because this discovery, you feel, opens some doors and closes others. And you don't know where some of those doors might lead.

It's useless to worry about all of it in the dark of the night, useless to fret about something that would cause you lack of sleep, but you do it anyway. You hear her breathing and only hers as Vriska remains silent in her own bed, and while it lulls you to sleep with its constance and rhythm it also keeps you awake, provoking more thoughts. How would Kanaya fit into this new future you have started to envision for yourself? It's too far ahead to know, and that's when you fully realize that this really isn't any time to think about all of this. Though you're definitely one to contemplate and figure things out, a fourteen year old girl shouldn't be burdened with thoughts of potential consorts for adulthood. You suspect this is the kind of thinking that makes other more 'normal' girls very happy, but you've already partially defined yourself and if anything part of that definition is abnormal or unusual.

Breakfast in the morning doesn't treat you well. Nothing is cooked enough and you feel slightly ill after eating. But it's definitely amusing to watch as Gamzee calmly scrapes all the eggs off his plate and onto Karkat's. Tavros apologizes for his unapologetic boyfriend and offers bacon. Karkat replies with, "I DO NOT WANT YOUR FUCKING BACON AND YOUR FUCKING EGGS. I DO NOT WANT THEM IN A BOAT, I DO NOT WANT THEM IN A MOAT. SO GET THEM THE FUCK AWAY FROM HERE." Karkat was asked to excuse himself from the dining room by some staff after that, and he wasn't all that happy about it, but he left anyway.

You're wearing your jacket, the one Kanaya made you, when you go out that day. You pass an old woman on the street outside the settlement reenactment place you're going to today, which is unusual. She's wearing a dark blue beanie and her hair is grey and long, not in a cut way but long with lots of split ends and unevenly grown bits. She's wearing a fleece jacket, but it looks like something almost bit through one of the elbows and most of it is heavily stained by various splotches of various un-colorful colors. She looks up at you and you can feel what might have been disparity if there was still hope leaking from her eyes. You're startled, you almost take a step back, by the way she really focuses on you.

"Money for the food-less?" she asks, lowering her gaze to focus absently on nothing in particular as she rattles the mostly empty tin can. You make the decision quickly, you aren't a person of much goodwill usually but you aren't feeling all that hungry either and lunch is scheduled to be within a half an hour, so you pull out the money set aside for lunch and carefully tuck it into the can. Kanaya waits for you, looking slightly suspicious. What's important is the woman, though, and how she looks up at you with a spark of something. You and her are almost at the same level with your faith in humanity, and you can see you just restored some of it for her. "Thank you very much." she mutters, and you think. You think about her, and for a second you feel like you could almost understand what she's feeling if she only told you, if only it was the time and place for that. But it isn't and it won't ever be, you suspect, so you follow Kanaya through the gates to catch up with the group.

"That was really generous of you." she says. "What are you going to do for lunch, though?"

"I'm not all that hungry, I do believe I shall be fine." you say. Kanaya frowns a little bit. A half an hour later you're seated while she's off to get food. She comes back with, among other things, a small waffle with some syrup on the side. You ask, "A waffle?" and she puts it on the table, moves it off of her tray. "What's this?"

"For you." she says, smiling, and you smile. Because maybe humanity isn't a lost cause, and maybe you could gain some more faith too.

There are more tours and more informative speeches about things that you don't really intend to employ in the future. You get back, sleep some more. When you get in the bus after breakfast, instead of twenty minutes to the next boring tourist destination it's a bit longer than that and to Washington DC. Finally, the biggest part of the trip. The most educational visit to a city you'll have, you're sure, and with knowledge you might actually have use for in the future. Knowledge of art in the museums, of lore in history, of nature's deadliest, most untamable beasts.

Though you are excited to get there, you still enjoy yourself _going_ there. The bus is pleasant, and though you don't really have a device on which you can listen to music yourself, Kanaya is willing to share hers. It's interesting to hear her tastes, to learn that they are every bit as refined as she is. Classical kind of music, with violins and flutes and pianos. You write some while she sketches another design.

Finally you get there, and you head off the DC portion of the trip with a visit to a museum. You love museums, so much that you'll say it twice. This isn't really the kind of museum you're used to, isn't really _your _kind of museum. It's the Spy Museum, and like most places the dining area is closed down so you guys can eat there. And like most places, they have three pre-prepared dishes to chose from. And like most places, one of those choices involves fried chicken, which you are totally done with at this point. You choose a burger over that.

The dining room's like a blast to the past, and to every retro movie you've ever watched. The floors are white and black tile checkered, the booths have red cushions with a plastic-like outside, there's a lot of shaped silver metal, or plastic aimed to look like metal. You feel like if you were old, you'd either feel your childhood memories being insulted, or possibly a strong and comforting sense of nostalgia. If only you knew at what point realistic portrayal ends and crosses over to over-idealized stereotyped memorabilia.

The museum itself is great, you guess, but you're still grateful when it's time to leave. You're exhausted from everything, from the trip in the bus, from all the walking around at the various settlements and the various museums. You start to want to just get through it all so you can get back to the hotel room and sleep, but at the same time you want to carefully savor each moment, each experience.

You settle for napping on the bus as you drive to a war memorial. You walk around for a bit more than forty five minutes, then you nape on the bus as you drive to the next war memorial. And then after that, again, during the trip to the next war memorial. You never knew that there were so many war memorials out there, so many memorials in one place, but you guess that since it's the nation's Capital, it's bound to have all of that.

You stay out late that night, later than you've been staying out on the trip so far. You flop into bed, any bed, when you get to the hotel room, and you sleep.

The next day you get up and immediately it's memorials. Breakfast is just a couple bites for the late sleepers, one of which you are not, and then it's off to the presidential memorials. You also pay your respects to the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial somewhere in there, and drive out to Arlington a bit after that. Lunch is lunch and dinner is dinner, and you're grateful for both of them when they come around. Walking around isn't a problem for you, in fact you find it enjoyable, but you haven't done this _much_ walking for a long time. It makes you hungry and it makes you tired. You and Kanaya take turns sleeping on each-others shoulders on the bus.

You get back late again, but earlier than last night, and since you've been napping plenty you're fairly rested, which leaves your mind fairly clear to think in the shower. You think about the memorials.

The memorials are different from each other, but each of them is beautiful. Many of them are both sad and happy, they celebrate the life of a person who no longer lives. Some of them show the names of the deceased, or the faces. They're mostly simple, made of large, cut stone. But you know they are so much more than that. You knew already, but they help you re-learn that there is beauty in simplicity.

Maybe it's not what the artists and designers of these monuments had intended, but you find the human race humbled slightly by them. They're large and cold, simple, at times overbearing. Covered with the names of the dead, sometimes. Humans act so big and knowledgeable, so righteous, almost, but in the end there's nothing that can immortalize them. Some people think they can be immortalized by memory, by photos. The intentions of the artists may have been to immortalize the warriors who fought bravely for their country through setting their names in stone. But for you it just shows how mortal all beings are, humans most of all. No matter how bravely all those men and women fought, no matter how long they held out, they died eventually. Even if they lived, even if they still live, they will die some day, and they will only be the tiniest possible portion of humanity that's now missing from the earth, only the tiniest possible amount of people will remember them, and eventually they will completely disappear from the earth as those people die off and younger generations replace them.

You feel like thoughts like these should depress you. You feel like this mortality should scare you, death should scare you. And in a way it does. But at the same time in thinking these thoughts you feel enlightened.

Or at least you think it's what enlightenment must feel like, somber detachment from reality. From life. It's one of those moments you have that come around every once in a while where you wonder about death. You wonder how those soldiers felt, if their life flashed before their eyes like the movies say, as the writers write. You wonder, if that's true, if the soldier with the bullet in their heart or in their brain gets to see their life flashing before their eyes, does the old man passing in his sleep? And what happens to them after that?

You've never really been that religious, though from time to time you consider it. It would be nice to have the security of thinking there was something better waiting for all those people, for you, after you die. But would it really be better?

You step out of the shower and towel yourself off. You're tired, you shouldn't be thinking right now when you could be sleeping. You curl up next to Kanaya, she's already taken her place in bed. You recognize the pajamas from that one night when you met outside by the drink machine. It seems so long ago now. You know so much more about her than you did back then. But still, thinking about it makes you feel different. Warmer, though the night was cold.

You can't help but wonder, what if that night had never happened? What if you had never met Kanaya? It's a terrible thought, so you stop thinking it.

You text your mother and try to sleep. You can't, and there's only one thing left to do that you can think of.

You write, you write about everything. All of your thoughts. All of the things that happened this last day and all the things that will happen. You close the book just before midnight, tuck it away, lie down, try to get some sleep.

You only open your eyes when you hear the moving of footsteps across the floor, the gentle brush of bare skin across the carpet. You don't move, though you see that it's only Vriska. You watch as she takes a couple steps, takes a box out of her her bag. It's a familiar box, you recall her having one like it a couple days ago. You remember then that somehow, somewhere, Vriska had managed to purchase a replacement magic eight ball as a 'souvenir'.

You watch as she opens the box, takes the eight ball out. The light from the open window is the only thing to see by, and as she's facing she almost completely shadows over the eight ball. She turns a little, and for a split second you can see light reflecting off it, almost blue. She rolls it in her hand, and you can see the whites of her eyes as the pupils flit around, not in a nervous way but overly cautious, as if she didn't want to be caught doing something. Then gently, she turns her back to you and there's a noise. The noise of something breaking.

She turns, slowly, walking to the bathroom. Her face and clothes, waist up she is covered with the dark, dark blue ink of the eight ball. She swears a little bit under her breath as she opens the door and comes out with a fresh towel and cleans up.

You tell yourself not to worry, you don't understand what's going on but it can't be anything worth worrying about. You sleep soundly and forget all about it, until the next day when you see that some of Vriska's skin is still tinted a light, almost unnoticeable blue.

You think a lot at breakfast. You feel like the trip has brought on a lot more thinking about certain things than usual, a lot more decisiveness. You've started to come to terms with who you are, and since you've never been one to take things unnecessarily slow, you decide to take the next step.

Vriska leaves for breakfast a lot later than you and Kanaya do, so when you leave to go back up to the room she's just barely getting her plate of food and digging in. Neither of you has to shower, there's nothing really for you to do. The television is left to some news channel on low volume so a middle aged man spewing out the details of local going-ons for not-your-home-town can be watched if you fancy. You know what you're going to do so you ignore the news man and turn to Kanaya on the bed you share, which at the moment you're both using as a couch.

"Kanaya, I'm lesbian." you say, without any buildup. It feels weird on your tongue, foreign, something you've never said out loud before. In fact, you're not sure you've even said that _word_ more than two or three times in your life in any given context. Lesbian. Kanaya looks at you and smiles a little bit, raising her eyebrow.

"You are?" she asks, and it's more of a statement then a question, like everything she says, but you can hear the undertone of sarcasm that she's trying for and you appreciate it, in a strange way.

"Yes." you say. You're usually the sarcastic one, but in this moment you are serious. You know that she knows you're doing this more for your benefit then for hers. You guess this could be considered 'coming out' by some standards, but you really don't feel like labeling it like that. This is just you, telling the truth about something you've never told the whole truth about.

"Well that's a relief." Kanaya says. Kanaya rotates a bit and leans over to plant a kiss on your lips. It lasts a good second longer then any kiss you can remember having, but it's as chaste as ever. You're thankful for that.

Vriska comes in just after you and Kanaya part, and then it's go time again. You pick yourselves up, get your stuff together, and hop on the bus.

You visit three more memorials that day, and then afterwards you go to the Smithsonian art museum. It's just you and Kanaya walking around together in your part of the museum while the rest of your tour group wanders the other areas. You check your phone for texts from your mother briefly, but there's nothing new. The only notable thing is how low it is on power.

You find sketches by Picasso and start talking with Kanaya, about the abstract colors he used, about the pictures he made. Kanaya starts up talking about Jean Paul Gaultier again, which you really don't mind. It's interesting enough subject matter, and it's her talking.

She talks about visiting an exhibit of his designs just before she started going to the school. It was beautiful, it was innovative, it was inspiring. There was one piece that caught her eye especially. It was for a female model to wear, but not a model by modern American standards. Her chest would have to be flatter then that to be worn as he intended. It's a dress, with a black skirt piece. The top has black and white striped sleeves and a straight neckline on top of more horizontal stripes across the torso. In the back you can see that the stripes are made of individual pieces of cloth, sewn together. Each stripe falls and meets at the lower back where they're all sewn together again, but past that they hang loose and long, drag across the ground.

She says it was the most beautiful design she's ever seen, in its simplicity and at the same time complexity. Conceptually, it could almost be used as a metaphor for life and death. People may be completely different, they may meet but never merge, but it doesn't matter in a larger sense because they'll all wind up dragging on the floor. That's your thought, not hers, and you keep it to yourself. Her thought is that there is beauty in things that don't seem so creative but still can be.

You would love to see that dress. You would love to understand it like she does. You're surprised when she says that you've seen some of the stuff he's done. Apparently he designed all of the costumes for 'The Fifth Element', which was another movie you watched together on a movie night. You remember vaguely, you remember it was kind of strange, but you can see how Kanaya would like that designer. Designers design stranger and stranger things as time goes on, so you guess if you want to be a designer you have to appreciate the strange, modern designs.

You suppose writing is a bit like that too. The sixteenth century poets may have written some free-form but the subject matter has always been exclusive to love, death, nature, and people, with none of the raunchier bits. It's almost like unspoken taboo, censorship from peers. Especially around the time of Walt Whitman, no one wrote about certain things because it was too scandalous, and then he went out and wrote about those things.

Kanaya and you start to talk about other things, the little details of life that don't really matter but are worth discussion of anyway. You talk as you walk and eventually you walk right into your tour group, gathering on the bottom floor of the museum. You progress to the museum of natural science, and then it's you, Kanaya, and a couple more people, walking around and looking at things that seem worth looking at. The animals on display are huge, fearsome. You don't doubt that several wouldn't hesitate to kill in life. The hope diamond is carved and you actually find it to be slightly less exciting then many of the other rocks you've seen. All in all, this museum was about as good as the last one.

You take a moment to text your mother in the bathroom. You tell her about Kanaya (_"I'd much rather tell you this in person but seeing as that proves impossible at the moment, I'm lesbian and I have a girlfriend. Her name is Kanaya."_) and notice again that your phone is low on power. You click it off and pocket it.

You're going to be walking to the next museum in a group. The teachers are staying back at the moment, or should you say 'chaperones', and should be over there when the other group finishes up. You realize as you start moving that, essentially, this is all of the English building kids walking around together.

It's about five minutes of awkward shuffling about until Tavros asks if anyone actually knows where they're going. Several people re-assure him that it shouldn't be too hard to find, just across the street, right? But the question is which street, you think. It's like the whole city is a perfect grid of squares (buildings) and the little lines are the streets. Four squares near to each-other shaping another square are the museums you're walking between. But you don't know what side of the museum you've exited from and where the others are because the streets are wide and there's space in between, little park fixtures.

Ten minutes of walking and no one's really sure where they're going any more, least of all you. Tavros gets scared again, just a little bit.

"Guys, I think we're lost." he says, biting his lower lip. Gamzee puts his arm around him reassuringly.

"Fuck." Vriska says. She takes out her phone and opens it, starts to punch in numbers, but then her expression goes south and she snaps the phone shut, pockets it. "My phone's dead."

Everyone starts going through their bags, their pockets, searching for their phones. You take yours out. Dead.

Karkat steps to the front of the moving pack and shouts. "Okay, everybody turn around! We're going to go back to the last museum and find the chaperones if they're still there!" And so all of you do. It's strange, certain circumstances it seems allow for Karkat's indisputable leadership.

You quickly discover that you're not sure which way you came from. You go down one street and then there's a crossroads, and Karkat decides immediately to go left. You do, You all do, but you still don't really get anywhere. Again and again, he gives out the orders, 'left', 'right', 'keep going', 'turn back', but you feel like they aren't helping any. You have the aching suspicion that they're actually getting you more lost.

"Fuck!" Karkat shouts as you approach a dead end. You turn back for what seems like the fifteenth time. As a really corny anime Karkat was caught watching once dictates, 'It was like some horrible joke. I only wish _that_ was the punch line.' You glance at Kanaya, who looks only slightly worried. You hold her hand, just as much for your sake as for hers, and she smiles. You give her a peck on the lips, quick an apparently welcome but still spontaneous, and you look back up. Karkat is fuming, cursing, storming around and leading the way. Sollux is trying to calm him down a little bit, but whatever he says mostly seems to end with him pissing himself off. Vriska and Terezi are talking a little bit, Eridan is looking kind of sombre which you have interpreted to be him mourning the lack of Feferi, Aradia and Equius are fighting. They're an unhappy couple if you've ever seen one, yet somehow they fit together enough to stay a couple. Nepeta is trying to calm Equius down some, and it works a little. Gamzee and Tavros are kissing. You realize it's gotten to the point where you find that surprising. They're just kissing– not making out. Not yet at least.

You're lost in the middle of a pretty much foreign city with no means of communication to the outside world and yet you feel kind of content. At least things are normal, aside from that.

Ten minutes later, says Equius's watch, you turn a corner. On one side, there's a cement and pretty ugly area for vans to unload into the back of some second-rate supermarket or other. There are more shops past that, one seems to specialize in the sale of antique clocks. But the most important thing is that past _all_ of that there's a spot between to brick walls where you can see a clean, new, working pay-phone and beyond that, cars moving through one of the crowded main roads.

You all move forward, Karkat at the head of the group, like always. You're happy, content, until you sense something's amiss. The shops are closed, all of them, not closed down but just closed. It's not late or particularly early, it's a time when they should be open. There's a park to one side and you're about to pass it when you stop. The group moves, flowing slowly, around you, only a couple steps. You saw a head in the bushes, peeping out, dark and mysterious. Karkat sees you're falling behind, takes a step towards you, and so does the whole group.

Then they fire.

You don't have much time, but you can tell they're not aiming at you and your friends, they're aiming at each other; darkly dressed men springing from the bushes and trees of the park and men in green felt suits from the shops opposite them. It's like a gang war you've walked right into.

The clock shop bursts into flames, seemingly of its own accord. You can barely hear Karkat screaming "EVERYBODY GET DOWN" over the noise of at least a dozen guns going off again and again. You try to respond, you can feel yourself starting to scream, starting to maybe cry. Everyone's lying flat to the ground or crouching.

Then it hits.

You wish for numbness, but that's not how it happens. You feel pain. You know the bullet's hit you, you know it's in the head. You don't know how deep it goes and you don't know which side of the brain it ends up on. All you know is that it didn't quite break your skull but it feels like it.

You fall to the ground then. You can see, through blurred eyes, Kanaya. She runs to you, grabs your head, puts it on her lap. Now you're starting to feel numbness. Tears of hers drop onto your face, and then she's sobbing. Mascara and eyeliner are all over her face now. You can feel yourself leaving, but you're not ready for that. Suddenly, there's complete silence.

You open your eyes. You feel like you're waking up from a dream that you don't quite remember. Kanaya's here, holding your hand, and it could almost be like normal, sitting on the bed at home or at the hotel with her, with your girlfriend. But then there are the stereotypical, bright florescent lights and the constant but distant beeping of some machine somewhere and the nurses in white dresses shuffling around with clip boards pressed tightly to their chests. And the IV needle nestled under your skin.

You want to ask how long it's been, since the shooting. Since getting lost in a nearly foreign city with no contact and no directions and the pay phone that was right there. You want to ask, but whatever's keeping your eyes bleary is keeping your voice down, your mouth closed. You take a minute to wake up, open your eyes more fully. Your vision doesn't clear completely. Maybe the bullet affected that. But you guess, the bullet affected everything.

"How long?" you finally ask. There's another thing to add to the list of reasons why this isn't just like any other day– Kanaya's cheeks are dark with the dripping and smudged mascara and eyeliner she had applied only that morning. Or is it even still that day? She takes a moment, looking like she's about to cry. She sits closer, moves the chair closer, and you can hear her breathing unevenly.

"Fifteen hours." she says. You think of John. Would he be disappointed that you lasted this long, that you couldn't die instantly like in the movies? How unfortunate that life isn't like the movies. If he were the one by your bed, you'd try to do your best to impress him. You'd say, 'Have I told you about it?' and he'd ask, 'About what?' You'd smile to the best of your ability and say, 'About knitting scarves in the winter...' You'd have a monologue all prepared, and it would end with, 'I would have loved to do that with you...' But this isn't John, this is Kanaya, and she's really and truly more than a friend, which makes it harder to find things to say.

"Really? That long?" you ask quietly. She grabs a tissue and it almost looks like she's trying to bury her face in it for a second. She doesn't reply, you both know it's rhetorical. Now it's up to her to continue the conversation, you've fallen silent. You're thinking.

What is death like? What concept of eternity is more frightening– reincarnation and having to keep going through the pains of growing up again and again and again, having to figure things out over and over, or living in a world with no changes in the scenery, heaven if you will, peacefully? If that's how it works? You're not sure you'd go to heaven, even if that is how it works. Maybe death is like dreaming. You think that could be nice, especially if it was a nice dream. Especially if you couldn't remember what life is like.

"I love you." she says. You're too tired to be startled, but still it takes you a bit by surprise that she continues the conversation. She loves you. That's pleasant.

"I love you too." You say. She starts crying a bit again, and you watch as she struggles to stop. You feel pity, strangely enough for her. She has to go through her girlfriend dying, she has to be the one to be there in what are probably her final moments. She's quiet for a moment, keeping a straight face while you think. What do you want? What will be your last words? Is it normal for people to plan this stuff out? Your mind is moving very sluggishly, you're having an even harder time thinking than before. "I want..."

"What do you want, Rose?" Kanaya asks, kindly, hopefully. You hate that. You would rather her be sad than hopeful. You feel like some great poet once said, "Lose not hope, for once hope is lost there is nothing." or something like that. But if hope is lost, there's nothing left to lose. Nothing to lose is good, can be good, and would be good in this situation for Kanaya. To help you with what you're trying to say.

"Tell them to bury me at the shore." you say, and she looks like she's about to start crying but maybe is too sad? You can't tell. She's holding your hand. "They should know where I mean. I don't think I've ever told you about it really. I wish there was more time so that I could."

"We'll make time." Kanaya says determinedly. You laugh in a sad way on the inside at that statement. It's not like her, not really, to be like this.

"It's a little house." you say. "A little house right on the beach, but... I guess it isn't really much of a beach. It's really... swampy. And there's a boat. A boat there, and my uncle takes us sailing. And sometimes, the beach. The real beach."

"Is it nice?" she asks. Tears well up in her eyes.

"Very nice." you say. "I want to be buried there, off to the side. I don't care about the wood of the coffin, I don't care if there are trees around me. As long as I'm buried there... I can be happy." You feel like there are more thoughts coming, more things to say, but there aren't really. There isn't really anything left to say.

"Karkat blames himself." Kanaya says, and you guess she feels like she should tell you what's been going on, so you're up to date.

"It isn't his fault." you say.

"I've tried telling him that." Kanaya says.

"Well, tell him I say it isn't his fault." you say. "Was anyone else... are they okay?"

"Yeah." she says. You don't know if she's lying, you honestly don't care at this point if she's lying, you just want to be peaceful. You are peaceful, you suppose.

"Lose hope for me." you murmur, and her eyes grow wide. More tears but not much crying, no sobbing. She's hearing you, that's good. "Lose hope, once you lose hope... there's nothing left to lose." Yes, you think. Those are good words for last words. You think they most likely will be that. Your last words.

Your mind drifts away, back to a time and a place. You remember the shifting of sand under water and water under the shiny, smooth surface of a sailboat. You remember the wind through your hair and in your face and the humidity and the happy, laughing family around you. You remember a time when you were on top of the world.

You close your eyes.


	6. Epilogue

It was no diary of Anne Frank, just the journal of a girl caught in the cross-fire of a gang shooting gone out of control. That's the only bit that's missing from her journal, the death. It starts around Christmas time, where she recaps everything that had happened so far in the year. It continues on to a bit of mild romance and typical teen confusion and hormonal surges. Then a trip near the end of the year with the students, friends warn her against her travels. She goes, she enjoys herself. She didn't even have the chance to write what a great day she was having before she died, how much she loved the Picasso paintings in the art museum, what she thought of the Hope Diamond. How she and some friends were just going on to the next museum but got lost on the way, found a path that looked like it would take them back out. All the dead cell-phones. And then the shattered windows. They would have gone back if the end wasn't right there, less than a block and a half away, a main road with lights and a pay phone stuck to a brick wall.

Then all the chaos erupted around them, glass flying and the antique clock store burning down. No way to escape, stuck in the eye of the storm.

You were there, you shrieked out to her. And you turned, just in time to see the bullet pierce her flesh, break through her skull and lodge in her brain. You ran over to her, you held her head in your lap, you cried. The cliché'd 'I won't leave you' lines broke out, and you would never leave her. But she started to leave you then, piece by piece, as if the blood leaking out onto your clothes was a part of her soul that was leaving her body forever.

They couldn't get her to the hospital fast enough.

She didn't pass on immediately, but there was nothing more they could do for her. She was with you for a couple of moments ten hours after the shooting. She spoke to you. Your heart broke at her every word, every second that she looked at you.

You look down at the book. It's old now, fifteen years maybe. You felt guilty every year, on her birthday, on the day of her death, for going on without her. And you know it's another horribly clichéd line, but you know that she'd want you to keep living on, so that's what you did.

But all these years and you never really did what you had to do. All the seminars on gang violence, all the aid to young writers. You tried knitting. Even for Rose, you couldn't figure out how to do it. You wore the scarf she made you until you had to stop for fear of getting it ruined. You never really read through the book until yesterday because it felt like an invasion of her privacy, but when you did you realized that she was much more of a genius then you remembered her to be. And you realized that she was a lot more loved then she thought she was. She never knew how much she fit in with her friends, did she? With you?

The writing is beautiful, eloquent, mature. You know it won't help her now to achieve her goals, but one of the things she always wanted to do was become a professional writer.

You have confidence in it, but you don't expect it to get accepted on the second try. You remember the conversation you had with her about publishing industries. It does though. Maybe that's because you're rooting for it and you've become such a national scandal that it would be suicide to reject this story when it could be used as gossip fuel, when it could sell brilliantly.

You don't know if they know it's a true story. You tell them.

The cover is a picture of them on the trip, you're in it but off to the side. You're not worth noticing. To her you were though. She's looking to the side a little bit, looking for you almost. The way they edit it's perfect. They fade all the others in the picture just enough, they move it, they put her towards the center and you can tell right away that that is Rose Lalonde.

She looks exactly like you remember her, and you start to cry a little on the spot. Short blonde hair, pale skin, the shirt with the little squid on it. A light sprinkle of pale freckles across her nose and cheeks that can barely be seen to the untrained eye.

They want you to present the book at this strange book convention thing they're taking you to, something you don't remember signing for but don't question.

There are people there who have the books clutched in their arms. They're seated. You spot a couple familiar faces in the crowd. You step onto the podium and there's a little bit of clapping. You don't deserve it, you're not the author. You didn't write this. She did.

You realize it then, they're not here for you, for your presentation and for your words. They are honest to goodness here for her.

You smile at that a little bit, and you feel drained of life. You tap on the microphone and laugh, you can hear how empty that laugh is. You open your mouth to speak and look at your cards. You close your mouth, and try again.

"I'm here to speak for Rose Lalonde. She is the author of this book. She always wanted to be a published author and psychologist, and I'm here to help make at least one of those dreams come true. Young death is more horrible than that of an adult for that reason, all the dreams that never came true, all the things left that a youth might want to accomplish in life. Rose was smart and beautiful and talented, and I know that publishing this book didn't make her come back, but I feel like it helped keep her memory alive. Rose... What Rose wanted most was to be a real girl, to be normal and to be accepted while still retaining the special parts of her that made her _her_. In this book you can see that she _was_ a normal teen while at the same time being talented and special, she felt and she wanted and she tried to understand things that were just out of her reach. She had a future planned out ahead of her. And I think it's only fair that she get some of that future. She was kind, and more than that she was fair. It's horrible how unfair the world is to take away that future for her. I'm not really sure what else to say, it looks like most of you have the book. You'll know what I mean when I say she was_ very _special to me. But the thing I don't think she understood is that she was special to all of us. If only Rose were here today, I would have liked to resolve that part of her that felt like she wasn't quite accepted. She was perfect in our group of misfits, and we were all perfect for her, I think. A lot of people ask me what I would say to her, if I could have given her a couple more sentences to bring to the grave. I would have liked to say something about how we all like her, how we love the scarves she made us, that her writing was magnificent. But mostly, I would have liked to tell her that I loved her, that all of us loved her, a hundred times over." Your composure, or what little of it was remaining, cracks at that point. Tears. You remember the time she told you that love was letting vanity fall to the wayside because of care for a person. You feel that holds especially true for you.

Though vanity is temporarily aside, you still fix your makeup a bit and change into a special dress as soon as you're done speaking. You wear a very special dress, black and white with a little bit of green. You love it in a more sentimental way then you love most of your designs. It's one of the few dresses you never made in numbers and sold to the public.

The drive is a couple hours and you make it in a Mini Cooper. You stop briefly at a florist's and pick up a bouquet. You see her mother when you arrive, and as usual she's drunk. You suppose everyone has their way of dealing with things.

The house on the shore has changed a lot since Rose used to visit regularly, as you understand. Property changed hands and there were slight renovations. Everything is newer. You can even tell, the dust has cleared off of the tea sets mounted on the wall, the old treadmill has been replaced with a new one, the television is larger and flatter than you remember it being. You go inside with Roxy, because you and Rose's mom are on a first-name basis, and you talk some. She knocks something over in an attempt to refill her glass, a carton of sugar resting on the counter, and white powder goes everywhere, coats the slightly dampened floor. You help clean up and wind up helping Roxy to bed, helping her to get some rest.

You go at seven in the evening to visit the grave. It's just out of the tide's reach and where the hammock used to be, or so they tell you. You can confirm that it's where the fireflies are thickest at night, just within the range to be seen by flames slowly eating away the logs in the pit. However, you don't light a fire this time.

The sun begins to set as you make your way over there from the house. Tears readily begin to stream down your cheeks, at the beauty in the sadness. For the sadness itself. You and Roxy stand in silence as the sun finishes setting, as the world becomes grey. Fireflies flicker on the headstone, on the grass in front of it. So many of them congregate to this one spot. You could read the writing by their light, the writing on the headstone, but you don't need to. You know the dates, you know the names. You know the quote carved into the headstone. It was chosen by Roxy with assistance from some of Rose's other relatives. "God gave us memory so we might have roses in December." (James M. Barrie.)

You place the bouquet, roses so deep a purple tied with a length of black yarn at the bottom. Symbolism is everywhere, even where it is not intended.

You wish memory gave you your Rose in this everlasting December, but it has failed to provide, try as it might. You think of her, but she does not live again because of that. You're twenty nine and sometimes you think of not aging a day further because it's hard to go on without her, without anyone to believe in you. You continue on, though. You're not sure how you feel about the idea of God, or about the afterlife. You know that someday, though, you will join Rose, one way or another, and it will finally be spring again.


End file.
